DEVELOPMENTS IN ARMENIA
By Berj Garibek, Telemetry Operations Engineer ITT Industries/NASA

AZG Armenian Daily #156, 02/09/2005

Dear friends at Azg, I’ve been following the developments occurring in
my fatherland, Armenia, and follow carefully the latest news updates
that concern Armenia and Artsakh. I’ve never been to Armenia, since I
was born in Baghdad, Iraq and now I live in Los Angeles, California;
however, Armenia’s future and well being, like every other Armenian
in the Diaspora, greatly concerns me. Since our victory in Artsakh,
1994, Armenia has been encountering great obstacles in order to
achieve a level of economic superiority over its neighbors, control
emigration and continue with its progress towards democracy. However,
Armenia’s neighbors continue its work against Armenia’s welfare
and increase their efforts to further isolate our homeland from the
outside world. When the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline project was in
progress, our leadership did nothing to prevent the realization of
the gas pipeline project. Of course, we had little power to influence
world leaders; however, our main ally (Russia) was asleep! Now we are
facing another obstacle: Kars-Akhalkalak-Tbilisi Railway Construction.

By the time the Russian bear wakes up, and Armenia’s leadership start
taking actions against this dirty Turkish-Georgian-Azeri game, Armenia
will be on verge of making compromises that will impact negatively
on its existence.

Proposed Solution: Armenia should start acting like it has the upper
hand in the region, and we do! First we need an able leadership,
who can make solid and sound decisions regarding the issues related
to Artsakh. The repeated trips of President Kocharian to meet with
the Azeris have produced nothing but frustration! We need to have a
leader that will stand up and say, “Azeris, these are Armenian lands,
not one inch from these territories will be returned to you, because we
won the war. Turkey won the war 85 years ago, now it occupies western
Armenia, the only way we get these territories back is through war,
not diplomacy, because diplomacy doesn’t work with the Turks.” For
Georgia, our leadership should start using some threatening language,
“Look what happened to Azerbaijan in 1994, we’ll do the same to you
if you don’t stop working against our interests”. And for Turkey,
that will be in a different email (that’s if you liked what I stated
in this email). Keep up the excellent work, and long live Armenia.