“THE APRIL INCIDENTS WERE PLANNED BEFOREHAND”
Karine Asatryan
A1+
[04:42 pm] 12 April, 2006
This day two years ago, until midnight, it never occurred to anyone
that the authorities would order to raise batons on the peaceful
demonstrators whose only demand was to establish justice in the
country. The violations on the night of April 13 came to testify
that the authorities of the third Republic of Armenia are able to do
anything. According to NA deputy Hmayak Hovhannisyan, the incidents
of April 2004 were planned.
– The opposition was isolated from the process of governing the country
by a coalition memorandum. I don’t want to say that the opposition
must have its people in the executive branch. It must by all means
control several Committees in the Parliament, as it was after the
1999 elections when it gave them the possibility to participate in
the processing of the legislative policy. Since the 2003 elections
all the initiatives of the opposition are blocked. As the opposition
was not given any chance to be integrated into the political field,
they went to the streets.
And so happened what happened.
– Could the April violations be prevented?
– There is one thing we must understand: if because of the obstacles of
the authorities or maybe because of their own mistakes the opposition
does not do its duty as a state institution which participates in
the governing of the country, there is always danger of suchlike
situations. These cases can be prevented, but in April 2004 the
authorities themselves created the situation as they wanted to prove
that the opposition will not reach anything even if the oppositional
wings join together.
– Do you mean to say that today there is danger of suchlike situation?
– Not today, as the society lives in an atmosphere of hopelessness. The
people do not pin hopes on anything for positive changes. In 2003
there was hope that there would be changes if the two oppositional
wings joined together. The hope was immediately eliminated by
the authorities. They warned the people beforehand that the joint
opposition will not reach anything.
Then they made a scenario and involved the opposition in it as a
result of which the opposition really failed to reach anything. This
was how the atmosphere was created.

ARMENIANS DEFEAT THE IRISHMEN IN HOCKEY
Panorama.am
17:27 26/04/06
The Armenian team of hockey won the first in history victory in the
official match under the aegis of International Hockey Federation. As
RIA News informs, the qualified tournament in the third division
of world hockey started in Reykjavik where the weakest teams are
gathered. The victory in that elimination tour means a rise in class
next year. In its first match the Armenian team yielded to the Turks
with the score 3:8, but on Tuesday the Armenians defeated the Irishmen
– 6:0. Goalkeeper Lavik Ghazaryan formed the first “dry” match in
the history of Armenian hockey and forward John Ghazanchyan made a
heat-trick and assisted his partners twice.
A year ago the Armenian team was defeated by the Irishmen with the
score 1:23 in the analogical tournament.

IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
By Gwynne Dyer
AZG Armenian Daily
27/04/2006
Two things about American immigration are different.
One is that the United States is the only large First World country
that has a long land border with a Third World country. The other
is that only the United States among developed countries possesses
a politically powerful domestic lobby that actively wants a large,
steady flow of unskilled immigrants, preferably illegal ones. Taken
together, these two oddities explain why immigration in America is
such an explosive topic, and why Congress is unable to pass any new
law regulating the flow.
The collapse last Friday of bipartisan negotiations in the Senate on a
new immigration bill probably marks an end for this year of the attempt
to impose some order on what many Americans see as out-of-control
illegal immigration. What split both parties and ultimately doomed the
law were President Bush’s proposals for an amnesty for nine million
of the estimated eleven million illegal immigrants already in the
United States, and a new programme to admit an extra 400,000 temporary
“guest workers” every year.
The House of Representatives recently passed a much tougher law
involving serious penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants
and the construction of a 700-mile (1100-km.) fence along much of
the Mexican border, but with Congress now in recess for two weeks,
that is probably dead too. There is probably neither the time nor the
political will for the Senate to have another go at the issue before
the elections that are due this November.
What this is all about is Mexicans. The United States, contrary to
local belief, does not have a particularly high proportion of recent
immigrants compared to other industrialised countries. No more than
one person in eight is foreign-born in the US, considerably less
than in neighbouring Canada (where the ratio is one in five) and not
much more than in large European countries like Germany, France or
Britain. But nowhere else has so many illegal immigrants, nor so many
who are unskilled workers, nor such a high share from a single country.
Mexican nationals make up the great majority of the “undocumented
workers” (illegal immigrants) in the US economy. Their large numbers
and high visibility give rise to paranoid fears among some longer
established Americans that the United States is becoming a de facto
bilingual country. They also stir a wider concern that this large and
vulnerable work-force of illegal immigrants is deliberately maintained
by employers as a way of keeping the wages of unskilled workers down.
The language issue is largely a red herring: most newly arrived
Hispanic families have become fluent in English by the second
generation, just as previous waves of immigrants did before them. But
the argument that illegal immigrants take jobs away from many equally
unskilled native-born Americans, and drive wages down for the rest,
has never been convincingly refuted, even though it remains politically
incorrect.
It’s not that native-born American high-school drop-outs “won’t do
those jobs.” They just won’t do them for five or eight dollars an hour
— or at least, a lot of them won’t. Many poor Americans simply have
no choice, however, and end up working long hours in miserable jobs
for half the money that an unskilled French or German worker would
earn for doing the same work.
Illegal immigrants are not a majority of the workers in most of
the fields where they find jobs; unskilled Americans are. (The only
job in which there are almost no native-born Americans is seasonal
agricultural stoop labour.) Professors George Borjas and Lawrence
Katz of the National Bureau of Economic Research recently calculated
that the real wages of US high-school dropouts would have ended up
eight percent higher in 1980-2000 if unskilled (and mostly illegal)
Mexican workers had been kept out, even if higher-skilled immigration
had continued at the existing rate.
One of the most ridiculous myths of American political discourse
is the argument that the US-Mexican frontier is too long to police
effectively and humanely. Here is a country that has landed people on
the Moon, and that currently maintains an army of 140,000 soldiers in
a hostile country halfway around the planet, claiming that it cannot
build and maintain a decent fence along the Mexican border. Instead,
we have been treated to a thirty-year political charade in which little
bits of fence are built in the traditional urban crossing places,
thus forcing illegal Mexican immigrants out into the desert where
many of them die — but enough still get through to keep America’s
low-wage industries fully manned.
Living right next to Mexico, a country where a large proportion
of the population lives in Third-World conditions, does create a
special immigration problem for the United States, but it is far
from insoluble.
It has only remained unsolved for decades because powerful economic
interests in the United States, with great influence over Congress,
do not want it solved.
All the other business that has been so earnestly debated in recent
week in the United States Senate — quotas for guest-workers,
amnesties for long-resident illegal immigrants, and so on — is just
the political cover that is needed to keep illegal immigrant labour
plentiful and unskilled wages low.

IRAN WILL STRIKE FIRST IN CASE THE USA USES THE TERRITORY OF AZERBAIJAN
Yerevan, April 25. ArmInfo. ‘American intelligence groups are at work
in Azerbaijan against Iran,’ stated in on interview to ‘Al-Ahram’
newspaper, Egypt, Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security
Council of Iran.
He stated that the American special services use the territories
of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan against Iran. According to him,
in case the military actions unfold, Iran may strike a blow at the
Baku-Tbilisi-Seyhan oil pipe line and the oil objects of Azerbaijan.
This was informed by iran.ru.

THREE ARMENIAN SOLDIERS REPORTEDLY WOUNDED IN AZERI CEASE-FIRE VIOLATIONS
Arminfo
26 Apr 06
Yerevan, 26 April: Three Armenian soldiers were wounded as a result
of a cease-fire violation by the Azerbaijani side.
A soldier of a military unit stationed in the village of Vayk, Pte
Arut Manucharyan, 19, was wounded as the Azerbaijani side opened
fire at 1140 [0640 gmt] today. He was called up from Armenia’s Nairi
District in 2005. The soldier’s state of health is satisfactory,
the press secretary of the Armenian Defence Ministry, Col Seyran
Shakhsuvaryan, has told Arminfo.
Two Armenian soldiers of a military unit stationed in Idzhevan
District, Narek Ovannisyan, 20, called up from Ashtarak District,
and Gor Abramyan, 20, called up from Yerevan’s Mashtots District,
were wounded as a result of a cease-fire violation at 2040 [1540]
yesterday. Ovannisyan was taken from an Idzhevan hospital to Yerevan
this morning, while Abramyan was taken to hospital in Vanadzor
District. The two soldiers’ state of health is satisfactory.
In both cases, the Armenian side did not return fire. Shakhsuvaryan
also denied the Azerbaijani media report accusing Armenia of violating
the cease-fire regime.

ARMENIAN, FRENCH SPEAKERS DISCUSS PARLIAMENTARY COOPERATION
Arminfo
26 Apr 06
Yerevan, 27 April: The speaker of the Armenian National Assembly, Artur
Bagdasaryan, and the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly,
Pierre Lellouche, discussed cooperation between the Armenian National
Assembly and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Paris on 25 April.
The Armenian speaker also held a meeting with his French counterpart
Christian Poncelet within the framework of his official visit to
France, the press service of the Armenian parliament has told Arminfo.
The sides discussed parliamentary cooperation between the two
countries. Bagdasaryan expressed his gratitude to Poncelet for his
assistance in organizing the Year of Armenia in France. Bagdasaryan
invited Poncelet to pay an official visit to Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKEY LASHES OUT AT CANADIAN PM
AZG Armenian Daily
27/04/2006
Turkey lashed out at prime minister of Canada, Steven Harper,
for publicly dubbing the events of 1915 as genocide. According to
Turkish state television, Turkish Foreign Ministry sent an official
complaint, calling the PM’s behavior biased approach and warning that
the “groundless” statements of the Canadian prime minister will have
a negative impact on Turkish-Canadian relations.

ARMENIA, SEYCHELLES ESTABLISH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
Arminfo
26 Apr 06
Yerevan, 26 April: The Armenian and Seychellois permanent
representatives in the UN, Armen Martirosyan and Jeremie Bonnelame,
singed a protocol on 19 April on establishing diplomatic relations
between the two republics.
By signing the protocol, Armenia and Seychelles pledge to stimulate
the strengthening of neighbourly relations between the two people,
the press service of the Armenian Foreign Ministry told Arminfo.

LITHUANIAN PRESIDENT: ANY NATION HAS RIGHT TO LIVE FREELY AND INDEPENDENTLY
Yerevan, April 26. ArmInfo. Any person, any nation and state has the
right to live freely and independently and to preserve its territorial
identity – this is the basis of the international law, Lithuanian
President Valdas Adamkus said during his meeting with Yerevan State
University professors and students today.
What is yours is yours, he said when asked to give a legal assessment
of the Karabakh conflict. At the same time, Adamkus said that no
solution can be imposed in the matter and the problem must be solved
through a dialogue. He urged the sides to start a dialogue and to
find right solution on the basis of mutual understanding.

TWENTY YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE CHERNOBYL NPP ACCIDENT, THE BIGGEST MAN-CAUSED RADIATION CATASTROPHE IN MANKIND HISTORY
Yerevan, April 26. ArmInfo. Twenty years have passed since the
Chernobyl NPP accident, the biggest man-caused radiation catastrophe
in the mankind history.
As ArmInfo was informed in the Embassy of Ukraine in Armenia,
more than 145,000 sq.km of the Ukraine territory, Byelorussia
and Russia underwent radioactive contamination as a result of the
accident, more than 5 mln people suffered, about 5,000 settlements
of these countries underwent contamination by radioactive nuclides,
from which 2218 villages and towns with population of about 2,4 mln
people – in the Ukraine. Twenty years later after the catastrophe,
there are many problems still to be solved. It is, first of all,
social, medical protection of all citizens, subjected to radiation
exposure, employment assistance to many thousand employees, economic
rehabilitation of the contaminated territories, the problem of
compensation of energy-producing capacities, turning of the “Shelter”
object into an ecologically safe one.
The Ukraine keeps on carrying out a complex of measures for the
population protection, suffered from the Chernobyl catastrophe. There
are 17 448 families in the Ukraine today, which receive benefits
as a result of the bread-winner’s loss during the catastrophe. Such
families exist in all regions of the country. In 1987-2004, 504117
people from among the suffered ones, who were under medical control
in patient care institutions, died, 497348 of them are grown-ups and
teenagers and 6769 are children. This statistics concerns only the
Ukraine’s citizens. If remember that thousands of specialists from
the whole former Soviet Union took part in the accident consequences
elimination, these digits will be more impressive.
The Ukrainian people will always remember the courage of more than
3,000 Armenians, who did their best to mitigate the Chernobyl accident
consequences. Four hundred people of them died afterwards from
the radiation dose. Unfortunately, today the Chernobyl catastrophe
remains only a Ukrainian trouble. As the President of Ukraine Viktor
Yuschenko noted in hid speech during the international conference,
being held in Kiev April 24-26, the Chernobyl catastrophe concerns
not only the Ukraine but many nations as well.