ARMENIAN MINISTER HAILS COOPERATION WITH NATO

ITAR-TASS, Russia
Dec 7 2006

Yerevan, 6 December: The expansion of cooperation between Armenia
and NATO "is perforce and aimed at countering the challenges," the
secretary of the Armenian national security council under the president
and defence minister, Serzh Sarkisyan, said today at a meeting with
the head of the European Commission Delegation to Armenia, ambassador
Per Eklund.

"Mutual relations with NATO are one of the components of Armenia’s
national security," the minister said.

The defence minister believes that "the republic’s involvement in
European Neighbourhood Policy was a turning point in the relations
between Armenia and the European Union".

He also noted the importance of Armenia’s Action Plan adopted on
14 November within the framework of this policy and activity of the
commission to coordinate work with the European organizations which
is being headed by Armenian President Robert Kocharyan.

AZERBAIJAN UNHAPPY WITH RUSSIAN WEAPONS STATIONING ON ARMENIAN BORDER

Azeri Press Agency
Dec 7 2006

Idzhevan, 7 December: [Russian] military hardware withdrawn from
Georgia, including armoured personnel carriers, part of the infantry
fighting vehicles, and small arms, have been deployed in military
units in the districts of Idzhevan, Tavush and Vardenis on Armenia’s
border with Azerbaijan, APA has learnt from military sources.

There is no information as to whether the hardware and small arms have
been handed over to the Armenian armed forces. Agreement is expected
to be reached soon to allow the Armenian military to use the hardware.

The head of the Defence Ministry press service, Col Ramiz Malikov, told
APA that they condemned this step by Russia. Malikov said that they are
aware of the stationing of the Russian weapons and part of the military
hardware on the territory of Armenia and the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan, the conflict zone. He said that international organizations
have been informed about this: "This step is having a negative impact
on the negotiating process, making the military situation in the
South Caucasus tense and upsetting the military balance."

DEFENCE MINISTER BUILDING UP IMAGE FOR ARMENIAN PRESIDENTIAL BID – PAPER

Haykakan Zhamanak, Armenia
Dec 6 2006

"Why has Serzh Sarkisyan become so active?"

The hyper-activeness of Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan is the
most discussed topic in the domestic political life of Armenia. Such
activeness seems to be premature in the context of a parliamentary
election that will be held on 12 May 2007.

Many people are searching for some other meaning and conclude that the
defence minister is preparing for an event which will happen earlier
than 12 May, an extraordinary event. We were witnesses of such an event
in Russia when President Yeltsin tendered his resignation and yielded
the rudder to prime minister Putin [on 31 December 1999]. This was
done to ensure Putin’s victory at the presidential election as none
of the potential rivals was ready for the early poll.

If we take this scenario in Armenia, it will turn out that – in
order to remodel his power base – Kocharyan is going to tender his
resignation and make Serzh Sarkisyan the president, with all the
remaining contenders not being ready for a presidential election. But
is such a scenario possible in Armenia? It is possible theoretically
but actually there are numerous difficulties.

The Karabakh conflict is the first of them. Today Kocharyan is trying
to show that he is ready to settle the conflict but resignation by him
would amount to ducking out and the world community would not allow
this. That is to say that unless the Karabakh conflict is settled,
Kocharyan has to stay in post till the end of his term.

Moreover, if the incumbent president were to drop out, it would be more
difficult to turn Sarkisyan into the president, because Kocharyan’s
premature departure might seem to many forces a good chance to get
rid of his partner.

A scenario for unilateral actions may be the next option. This might
involve Sarkisyan starting an attack without coordinating it with
Kocharyan. We mean a coup d’etat. The basis of such a prospect may
be the fact that Sarkisyan sees Kocharyan supporting the Prospering
Armenia party so much, and this situation is outside the framework of
the scenario whereby the defence minister would become president. And
Sarkisyan, assuming the impossibility of stopping the process in an
ordinary way, would seize power. This option is even more impossible
as Sarkisyan’s prospect to make himself a civil political activist
would be in vain and he would find himself in the role of an ordinary
putschist.

So why then has Serzh Sarkisyan become so active? The point is that
the incumbent defence minister understood that – despite having
access to much money and many skinheads – he needs public support in
modern politics. And at present he is simply trying to find points
of reconciliation with the public: somebody has told him that his
public image is very negative and his team is trying to correct this
mistake. We think there is no basis to look for another meaning in
all of this.

KARABAKH COMPLAINS OF LOSING MONEY ON RELATIONSHIP WITH ARMENIA
by Anna Israelyan

Aravot, Armenia
Nov 22 2006

"The NKR gives more money to Armenia than gets"

The speaker of Nagornyy Karabakh’s parliament, Ashot Gulyan, is not
happy with the size of the credit allocated from the Armenian budget
to the Nagornyy Karabakh republic [NKR]. When Robert Kocharyan, former
NKR president, became the president of Armenia in 1998, an office
of the State Customs Committee which had been working on the border
between the NKR and Armenia for seven years was closed. The decision
was logical from the political standpoint, for states which aspire
to unite should not have points that separate them. But whether or
not the move was economically justified remains at least disputable,
at least in terms of the interests of the NKR.

All the goods that enter Nagornyy Karabakh have passed through
Armenian customs and Armenia has kept sizable funds which should
be given to the NKR. According to estimates of the NKR government,
the customs fees transferred to the Armenian budget amount to some
5bn drams [more than 13m dollars] a year. For this reason the NKR
officials have repeatedly said that this sum should really be passed
on to Nagornyy Karabakh immediately and could form the bulk of the
money given [by Armenia] to the NKR.

The leader of the parliamentary commission on finance, budget and
economic issues, Gagik Minasyan, told us that 4.4 per cent of the
Armenian budget is given to Karabakh through the inter-state credit
every year. And he confirmed the current state of affairs. "I can say
that if any other state includes customs fees in its state funds,
then Karabakh does not have such an opportunity, I think that this
money fully compensates the inter-state credit which we give to the
NKR," Minasyan said.

Let us note that by means of the inter-state credit Armenia supplies
about 65 per cent of the NKR budget. People in Karabakh think that
it is necessary to specify that the sums of the inter-state credit do
not come 100 per cent from Armenia and its state budget. One top NKR
official even told us that actually they leave bigger sums in Armenia
when performing customs clearing than the Armenian budget allocates
to them. Asked about this, NKR parliament speaker Ashot Gulyan smiled
and replied in a diplomatic way: "There are various calculations. I
cannot say if these sums are really bigger than those given to us.

But I think they need to be specified. Anyway, it is more correct to
have bigger demand as in the economic development sense today the NKR
needs more investment, and this applies to foreign investment as well
as to the inter-state credit."

For several years now the NKR has proposed establishing finance and
economic specifications between Armenia and Karabakh. The dignity
of proud Karabakh residents will not be insulted and they will be
pleased if it becomes a fact that they acquire the [customs] sums
that should have reached them anyway. They want a separate line [in
the budget accounts] to say how much NKR money from the inter-state
credit is left at customs points [in Armenia].

FOUR ARMENIANS FROM YEZID MINORITY SET FIRE TO THEMSELVES

Agence France Presse — English
December 7, 2006 Thursday 3:18 PM GMT

Three teenage boys and their grandmother set fire to themselves
Thursday outside the president’s residence during a protest by members
of Armenia’s Yezid minority, the head of the community, Aziz Tamoyan,
told AFP.

The four, who were rushed to hospital in a critical condition, were
protesting along with other residents from their village over the
murder of the teenagers’ father on November 6.

Villagers have accused the police and judicial authorities of bias
after releasing the head of a neighbouring village, who they claim
was one of seven men who beat to death the 42-year-old man from
their village.

Some 42,000 Yezid people live in Armenia, or around one percent of
the population.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NOBEL-WINNER PAMUK FINDS INSPIRATION IN LONELINESS, SELF-DOUBT AND ANGER
By Karl Ritter, Associated Press Writer

Associated Press Worldstream
December 7, 2006 Thursday 7:22 PM GMT

Nobel literature winner Orhan Pamuk said on Thursday the secret to
good writing is stubbornness and patience and that inspiration hits
an author in moments of utter solitude and self-doubt.

The Turkish author also revealed he is driven by passion, curiosity
and even rage.

"I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone," he said
in a Nobel Prize lecture dedicated in large part to his late father. "I
write because I never managed to be happy. I write to be happy."

Pamuk, 54, is to collect his 10 million kronor (euro1.1 million; US$1.4
million) award in a ceremony on Sunday. By tradition, the literature
prize winner delivers a lecture to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Unlike last year’s winner Harold Pinter, Pamuk did not use his lecture
for political commentary, but focused on the sometimes agonizing
craft of writing.

"The writer’s secret is not inspiration for it is never clear where
it comes from it is his stubbornness, his patience," Pamuk said.

"The angel of inspiration … favors the hopeful and the confident"
and appears "when a writer feels mostly lonely, when he feels most
doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing."

Pamuk’s life and works illustrate the struggle to find a balance
between East and West, a topic he touched on several times during his
lecture by referring to his father’s library, with Western literature
at one end and Turkish books at the other.

"I felt that my father had read novels to escape his life and flee
to the West just as I would do later. Or it seemed to me that books
in those days were things we picked up to escape our own culture,
which we found so lacking," Pamuk said.

"What I feel now is the opposite of what I felt as a child and a
young man: for me the center of the world is Istanbul."

In pronouncing the Istanbul-born writer the winner of its prestigious
prize in October, the Swedish Academy said Pamuk "in the quest for
the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols
for the clash and interlacing of cultures."

The announcement was met a mixed reaction in his homeland, where
nationalists professed shame at the selection of a man who speaks of
the oppression of Armenians and Kurds, while many writers called it
a historic moment for their rich literary tradition.

"What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are
humanity’s basic fears," Pamuk said, adding they include the fear
of being left outside, of feeling worthless and vulnerable "and the
nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind."

"We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the
Western world and I can identify with them easily succumbing to fears
that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their
fears of humiliation and their sensitivities," he said.

"I also know that in the West a world with which I can identify
with the same ease nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in
their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the
Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to
a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid."

Concluding his lecture, titled "My Father’s Suitcase," Pamuk recalled
that his father, who died in 2002, was so impressed by his first
novel that he predicted the then 22-year-old Pamuk would go on to
receive the highest accolade in literature.

"He told me that one day I would win the prize that I am here to
receive with such great happiness," Pamuk said.

FOUR PEOPLE SET THEMSELVES ON FIRE IN ARMENIA TO PROTEST LAW ENFORCERS’ INACTION

Associated Press Worldstream
December 7, 2006 Thursday

Three teenagers and their grandmother set themselves on fire in
the Armenian capital Thursday to protest what they said was law
enforcement agencies’ inaction in investigating a relative’s death,
a family member said. Two of them were injured.

The protesters poured gasoline on themselves and set themselves on
fire in front of the president’s office in Yerevan, the teenagers’
great uncle Surian Avdalian told The Associated Press.

The elderly woman and her 14-year-old grandson were wounded and
hospitalized with burns, Avdalian said. The other two grandsons
were unharmed.

The four were members of the small Yazidi community, who were
protesting what they called official inaction in last month’s
beating death of the children’s father, which they said was not
being investigated, Avdalian said. They argued that the case was not
being probed because of discrimination against the Yazidi, a Kurdish
ethnic group.

Officials would not comment on the incident.

About 50,000 Yazidi live in Armenia.

TODAY IN HISTORY – DEC. 7

Associated Press Worldstream
December 7, 2006 Thursday

Today is Thursday, Dec. 7, the 341st day of 2006. There are 24 days
left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1988, a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern
Armenia; official estimates put the death toll at 25,000.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked American and British
territories and possessions in the Pacific, including the home base
of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

On this date:

In 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the
U.S. Constitution.

In 1796, electors chose John Adams to be the second president of the
United States.

In 1836, Martin Van Buren was elected the eighth president of the
United States.

In 1946, fire broke out at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta; the blaze
killed 119 people, including hotel founder W. Frank Winecoff.

In 1963, during the Army-Navy game, videotaped instant replay was
used for the first time in a live sports telecast as CBS re-showed
a one-yard touchdown run by Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh. (Navy
beat Army, 21-15.)

In 1972, America’s last moon mission to date was launched as Apollo
17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

In 1972, Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippine President Ferdinand E.

Marcos, was stabbed and seriously wounded by an assailant who was
then shot dead by her bodyguards.

In 1983, in Madrid, Spain, an Aviaco DC-9 collided on a runway with
an Iberia Air Lines Boeing 727 that was accelerating for takeoff,
killing all 42 people aboard the DC-9 and 51 aboard the Iberia jet.

In 1987, 43 people were killed after a gunman aboard a Pacific
Southwest Airlines jetliner in California apparently opened fire on
a fellow passenger and the two pilots, causing the plane to crash.

In 1988, a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern
Armenia; official estimates put the death toll at 25,000.

Ten years ago: The space shuttle Columbia landed at the Kennedy Space
Center, ending a nearly 18-day mission marred by a jammed hatch that
prevented two planned spacewalks.

Five years ago: Taliban forces abandoned their last bastion in
Afghanistan, fleeing the southern city of Kandahar. Americans held
services on the 60th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. The
space shuttle Endeavour docked with the international space station,
delivering a new three-member crew to relieve a crew in place since
August. The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 5.7 percent in November,
the highest in six years.

One year ago: Federal air marshals shot and killed an airline passenger
at Miami International Airport after he falsely claimed to have a bomb.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Eli Wallach is 91. Bluegrass singer Bobby
Osborne is 75. Actress Ellen Burstyn is 74. Senate Appropriations
Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is 69. Broadcast journalist
Carole Simpson is 66. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny Bench is 59.

Country singer Gary Morris is 58. Singer-songwriter Tom Waits is 57.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairwoman
Susan M. Collins, R-Maine, is 54. Actress Priscilla Barnes is
51. Basketball Hall-of-Famer Larry Bird is 50. Former "Tonight Show"
announcer Edd Hall is 48. Rock musician Tim Butler (The Psychedelic
Furs) is 48. Actor C. Thomas Howell is 40. Pop singer Nicole Appleton
(All Saints) is 31. Actress Shiri Appleby is 28.

Singer Aaron Carter is 19.

Thought for Today: "Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail
because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious
possession their ignorance." Hendrik Willem van Loon, Dutch-American
journalist and lecturer (1882-1944).
From: Baghdasarian

SERGUEïKHACHATRYAN: LES DISQUES DE LA SEMAINE
Par Christian Merlin

Le Figaro, France
07 decembre 2006

Concertos Pour Violon

De Chostakovitch (Dir. Kurt Masur)1 Cd NaÏve

On raconte qu’a sa première repetition avec Sergueï Khachatryan,
la où l’orchestre doit reprendre a la fin de la cadence du soliste,
Kurt Masur, a qui pourtant on ne la refait pas, est reste immobile,
la bouche ouverte. À l’en croire, il n’avait plus entendu ca depuis
David Oïstrakh. Il est vrai que le jeune violoniste armenien est
un musicien tout a fait exceptionnel. La richesse de sa sonorite,
l’intensite de son chant, la longueur de son phrase vont de pair avec
un engagement emotionnel qui laisse effectivement sans voix. Surtout
dans les deux concertos de Dmitri Chostakovitch, où le vieux chef et
le jeune violoniste se retrouvent unis par le meme feu tragique.

Renversant.

–Boundary_(ID_RnxH3UXPgDo aIvhluXpMQQ)–

18TH ANNIVERSARY OF SPITAK EARTHQUAKE MARKED IN KARABAKH

PanARMENIAN.Net
07.12.2006 15:49 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The 18th anniversary of devastating Spitak
earthquake was marked in Nagorno Karabakh December 7. In the morning
people attended the memorial complex in the NKR capital city to lay
wreaths to the monument to the victims. President Arkady Ghukasian,
National Assembly chairman Ashot Ghulian, Prime Minister Anushavan
Daniyelian, parliament members, commanders of the NKR Defense Army
also commemorated of those killed in the earthquake.

The acolytes of the Artsakh Hierarchy of the Armenian Apostolic Church
chanted a service in memory of the victims, reports IA Regnum.