Foreign Ministers of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan met in Moscow
Public Radio of Armenia
Oct 6 2006
06.10.2006 15:55
Today in Moscow the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov met
with his Armeniana and Azerbaijani counterparts Vardan Oskanian and
Elmar Mammadyarov.
The Russian Foreign Minister positively assessed the results of the
meeting with the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, who
arrived in Moscow to discuss the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict. In Sergey Lavrov’s words, “the meeting was productive,”
strana.ru informs.
“It was not accidential that Moscow was elected a place for
trilateral meeting, since Russia has played an important historic
role in Transcaucasia, particularly in the settlement of the Karabakh
issue,” the diplomatic source of Moscow informs. The conversation
in this format mainly focused on the search for ways of the conflict
resolution.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The visit of the CoE Ad Hoc Committee on Nagorno Karabakh to the region postponed
Public Radio of Armenia
Oct 6 2006
06.10.2006 14:43
At the suggestion of the President of the Council of Europe Ad Hoc
Committee on Nagorno Karabakh Lord Russell Johnston the visit of the
committee members to the region has been postponed.
PR Department of the National Assembly told ArmInfo that during the
meeting with the Heads of Armenian and Azerbaijani delegations to the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Tigran Torosyan
and Safar Abiev Mr. Johnston noted that this is not a proper time for
the members of the committee to visit the region. I would be better
to postpone it till next year and to hold discussion in Strasburg,
featuring members of Armenian and Azerbaijani delegations.
The agenda of discussions will be fixed soon.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Zurab Noghaideli: Russia is toughening Armenia’s isolation
Public Radio of Armenia
Oct 6 2006
06.10.2006 11:50
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli considers that the latest
steps Russia has undertaken against Georgia toughen Armenia’s
isolation, MEDIAMAX agency reports.
Head of the Georgian Government said this in the article titled “Why
does Georgia aspire to Europe?” printed in the International Herald
Tribune newspaper.
“The latest sanctions of the Kremlin – suspension of air, land, sea
and post communication with Georgia – do not only affect us, but also
toughen the isolation of our neighbor Armenia,” Zurab Noghaideli.

By 2007 Argentina may commemorate the Armenian Genocide victims on the state level
Public Radio of Armenia
Oct 6 2006
06.10.2006 10:57
It is possible that by 2007 April 24 will be marked in Argentina as
the day of commemoration of Genocide victims on the state level, RA
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Argentina Vladimir
Karmirshalyan told “Armenpress,” adding that the local Armenian
community has been actively working in this direction.
In the Ambassador’s words, two states of Argentina – Buenos Ayres
and Cordoba – recognized April 24 as the day of commemoration of the
first genocide of the 20th century. The Laws require that the Armenian
Genocide is included in textbooks.
Let us remind that since 1985 the question has been raised in Argentina
for several times. Every year representatives of the Senate come forth
with resolutions or statements condemning the Genocide. On July 27,
2005 the Senate reconfirmed the condemnation of the Armenian Genocide,
which caused the protest of Turkish authorities.
Nevertheless, up to now it has not been recognized with the force
of law.

The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario)
October 6, 2006 Friday
Final Edition
Orchestra struggle saddens conductor
by LIANNE ELLIOTT, RECORD STAFF
Raffi Armenian is heartbroken to see the symphony he devoted so much
of his life to fall toward financial ruin.
The celebrated conductor was the heart of the Kitchener-Waterloo
Symphony from 1970 to 1993, transforming it from an amateur orchestra
to a critically acclaimed organization.
“I don’t want to see my 23 years just melting away,” he said
yesterday. “It takes so long to build something and it’s so easy to
destroy it.”
The symphony is on the brink of bankruptcy. The board of directors
announced Wednesday that the symphony must raise $2.5 million by Oct.
31 or be forced to shut down.
“My worry is that there is only three weeks to raise so much money,”
Armenian said. “That will be very difficult.”
Reached at the University of Toronto, where he teaches, Armenian said
the symphony’s sudden financial crisis leaves him with many
questions.
He can’t understand why the orchestra allowed its financial problems
to get so bad that it only has three weeks to save itself.
The symphony’s general manager, Dan Donaldson, said the severity of
the problems only came to light after the end of the fiscal year, on
Aug. 31.
Analyzing numbers, the symphony realized it was in more trouble than
it thought. This year, pulling through will not be possible. The
symphony realized it would need between $1 million and $1.5 million
to stay afloat and pay its 66 musicians and staff for the rest of the
season.
It will need another million to survive the following year.
One of the main reasons for the symphony’s financial trouble is
attendance. Fewer people are buying tickets every year — about
56,000 tickets were sold in the 2002-03 season, compared to 42,000
this past season.
Armenian says it makes no sense that people in this community aren’t
buying tickets.
Symphony crowds are traditionally made up of well-educated people
with higher incomes and this community has no shortage of people who
fit this bill.
Armenian points out that Waterloo Region is an increasingly
intellectual area, boosted by institutions like the University of
Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics.
“You have the best customers,” Armenian said. “I don’t understand how
we aren’t bringing these people to the symphony. It’s
incomprehensible.”
Armenian said the symphony has to offer programming that people want
to hear or they won’t come.
He said it wouldn’t be fair for him to speculate on what that
programming should be.
He’s been out of the community for 13 years and doesn’t know its
pulse anymore.
One thing is clear, Armenian says, the symphony absolutely needs a
permanent conductor.
The orchestra has been searching for one ever since the controversial
firing of Martin Fischer-Dieskau in 2004.
Fischer-Dieskau, reached at his home in Germany yesterday, did not
want to make any comments on the symphony’s current financial crisis.
Armenian said not having a conductor is harming the symphony.
“It has no leader. Do you know of anything that can work without a
leader?”
The conductor is the artistic director of the orchestra, who decides
what approach the orchestra should take, what music it should tackle
and what goals it should have.
“They have a vision and that’s what you need,” said Armenian, who now
lives and teaches in both Montreal and Toronto.
When Armenian filled the role of conductor, the Kitchener-Waterloo
Symphony embarked on world tours, made critically acclaimed
recordings and drew celebrated guest musicians to the region. Tickets
sales flourished.
Armenian said it is upsetting to think that such a vibrant symphony
could fall apart.
“I feel immense sadness,” he said. “It’s a sad moment for me to watch
this happening.”

NEWS FEATURE: Armenian genocide haunts Dutch-Turkish politicians
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
October 5, 2006 Thursday 10:30 AM EST
Rohan Minogue, dpa
The Hague
DPA POLITICS Dutch Politics Turkey NEWS FEATURE: Armenian genocide
haunts Dutch-Turkish politicians Rohan Minogue, dpa
The Hague — The Armenian genocide of almost a century ago has returned
to haunt Dutch politicians of Turkish origin, whatever their political
leaning.
While the European Parliament was deciding last week to lift a
requirement that Turkey acknowledge as genocide the death in 1915-16
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, the main Dutch parties were
throwing Turkish candidates off their electoral lists over the issue.
Caught in the middle just seven weeks before the country goes to the
polls is Nebahat Albayrak, who occupies the second position on the
list of the main opposition Labour Party (PvdA).
She has backed a parliamentary motion describing the deaths as
genocide, but questions have been raised over the exact position
taken by this Turkish-born politician.
“I have to acknowledge that I knew little about the issue, but when
I looked into it, I encountered a problem: All the sources appear
to be corrupted,” Albayrak, who has been in parliament since 1998,
said in a recent interview with the newspaper Trouw.
Last week the PvdA was the first to act, excluding Erdinc Sacan from
their list, where he had held the 53rd position, after he refused to
sign an undertaking that he regarded the events of 1915 as genocide.
The ruling Christian Democrats (CDA) then removed Ayhan Tonca, 35th
on the party list, and Osman Elmaci, 56th, after they had backtracked
on a previous statement. Tonca, at least, would have been
certain of becoming a member of the new parliament.
When the party attempted to mollify its angry Turkish support base
last weekend by placing another Turkish candidate low down on the
list for the November 22 elections, it was accused of tokenism.
A group of senior members of Turkish origin in the party attempted
to have the “token Turk” at number 55, Nihat Eski, removed during
the party congress, but the leadership went ahead anyway.
Albayrak, who came to the Netherlands at the age of 2, remains
reluctant to take the word “genocide” in her mouth, preferring to urge
both sides to set up a probe to uncover what took place in central
Anatolia from 1915 onwards.
And she is angry about the pressure she is coming under.
“What we are being asked to do looks like an imposed profession of
faith. It’s a kind of spasm from a country that does not know how to
deal with people like me, with the second generation,” she says.
Ton Zwaan, an academic at the University of Amsterdam who has studied
genocide, accuses Albayrak of being “in denial,” adding that her
position is little different from the official Turkish position.
Albayrak, like Coskun Coruz at 19 on the CDA list, has taken to
avoiding the press, although in an interview to be published in the
next issue of the analysis magazine HP/De Tijd she says she feels as
though she is “under permanent examination over her loyalty.”
Sacan regards the PvdA as hypocritical, saying that he, like Albayrak,
regards the historical sources as unreliable.
He notes that the issue remains a controversial one among European
governments, some of whom refer to genocide, while others, including
the Netherlands, avoid the term.
CDA politicians Tonca and Elmaci are more forthright.
In interviews Tonca has made clear that he does not believe genocide
took place, while Elmaci has described estimates that 1.5 million
Armenians were killed, as “seriously exaggerated.”
In a tight electoral race – recent polls put the CDA and PvdA
neck-and-neck – and with most in the 365-000-strong Turkish community
tending towards the PvdA, the party faces a problem.
Yuksel Kaplan, a PvdA local politician in Amsterdam, said he and
his colleagues had been inundated by e-mails and text messages from
“angry Turks.” He predicted 70 per cent of the Turks eligible to vote
could stay at home on November 22.
If a high-profile figure like Albayrak feels pressured to withdraw
from the PvdA list, that could mean the difference between being the
main party of government and four more years in opposition.
As the NRC Handelsblad asked this week: “Did the two parties know
what they were bringing down on themselves when they demanded their
Turkish candidates acknowledge the Armenian genocide?”
Oct 0506 1030 GMT

FOURTY-ONE REFUGEE FAMILIES TO RECEIVE DWELLING CERTIFICATES
ARMINFO News Agency
October 6, 2006 Friday
The Minister of Town-planning, Aram Harutiunyan, has visited today
the Kotayk region to get acquainted with the course of construction
of four schools and provision of refugees with dwelling certificates.
As ArmInfo was told in the Ministry’s press-service, the construction
is carried out for the budget means. In particular, the construction
of two schools in Garni and Aghavnadzor, as well as in Charentsavan
is underway. 880,08 mln drams were allocated by the country’s budget
for this project implementation. 1,740 bln drams will be allocated
in 2006 by Armenia’s budget to implement the dwelling certificate
issue program. The Program has been started in September, 2006. It is
envisaged to give the corresponding documents to 220 beneficiaries
in total. 870 mln drams have been allotted by the state budget for
these purposes.

ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT INCREASES INVESTMENTS IN EDUCATION
ARMINFO News Agency
October 6, 2006 Friday
The Armenian Governmentl is going to give more attention to IT
education than production, says Armenian Prime Minister Andranik
Margaryan.
For this purpose the Government is going to increase IT financing
and to attract soft loans. Margaryan says that presently two
big world renowned companies need good specialists. He says that
foreign companies consider Armenia as the best country in the region
for personnel training. However, it is necessary to train not only
students but also teachers. At the same time, the biggest problem in
the IT sphere in Armenia is copyright.

EU TO DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE FOR SETTLEMENT OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT: EU SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE
ARMINFO News Agency
October 6, 2006 Friday
Alan Wadams, Special Representative of the European Commission in
Azerbaijan, declared at a conference dedicated to the co-operation
between Azerbaijan and the EU, to do everything possible to resolve
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Trend reports. He noted that an Action
Plan of the European Neighborhood Policy will be signed in Brussels
in November. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will also attend the
ceremony, who will sign a memorandum on the energy sector.
Wadams stated the EU offers Azerbaijan its co-operation in the
economic, social and political fields. The Action Plan of the European
Neighborhood Policy will be an agreement between Azerbaijan and
the CE. The settlement of frozen conflicts was also included in
the Agreement. The EU is signing a similar document with Armenia
and Georgia.

HEAD OF VENICE COMMISSION: CE PLANS TO APPROVE ACTION PLAN ON ELECTION IN ARMENIA
ARMINFO News Agency
October 6, 2006 Friday
The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers is to approve an
Action Plan on election in Armenia next week. Secretary of CE Venice
Commission Gianni Buquiccio said in an interview with ArmInfo.
He said under the Action Plan, the CE plans a number of measures
to help Armenian citizens conduct fair elections in 2007-2008. In
particular, a great attention will be paid to the role of Mass Media
in the course of pre-election campaign and elections. In addition,
a great role is assigned to judges in the process of consideration
of complaints against election rigging. The Council of Europe
plans also training for officials of election commissions. Thus,
we exert much efforts to help Armenia conduct democratic elections,
the expert said. The official implementation of the Action Plan will
start at the end of the current year and will continue throughout the
year 2007. Besides, the Venice Commission expert said the political
will of Armenia’s authorities is a basic principles for free and
fair elections.