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05/15/2006
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1) Orinats Yerkir Members Follow Baghdasarian Out of Government
2) Turkey Threatens French with Sanctions over Armenian Genocide Law
3) US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Nominee Affirms Commitment to Peaceful
Resolution of Karabagh Conflict
4) Repatriation Efforts in Georgia to Negatively Affect Georgian Armenians

1) Orinats Yerkir Members Follow Baghdasarian Out of Government

YEREVAN (RFE/RL/Armenpress)The Orinats Yerkir party of outgoing Parliament
Speaker Artur Baghdasarian, lost yet another Parliament member to the ruling
coalition on Monday. However, several senior government officials affiliated
with the party remained loyal to the Baghdasarian, heeding his calls to
resign.
Baghdasarian cited growing policy disagreements with Kocharian, and the two
other parties in the ruling coalition, the Republican Party and the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation, as he officially announced his resignation and
Orinats Yerkir’s withdrawal from the Armenian government on Friday.
Baghdasarian stopped short of blaming Kocharian for this month’s defection
of a
dozen Orinats Yerkir parliamentarians, which precipitated the party’s exit.
According to Prime Minister and Republican Party member Andranik Markarian,
Orinats Yerkir’s withdrawal from the coalition was inevitable because of
Baghdasarian’s disagreements with the socioeconomic and foreign policies
pursued by Armenia’s leadership.
He noted in particular that its repeated demands for providing large-scale
compensation to Armenians who lost their Soviet-era bank savings during the
early 1990s “ran counter to the economic policy of our state.” He also
rejected
Baghdasarian’s recent calls for Armenia’s eventual membership in NATO as
“unacceptable”. 
Orinats Yerkir’s faction in the 131-seat legislature was reduced to just nine
members after another defection Monday. The latest defector, Mekhak
Mkhitarian,
issued no explanations, just like the nine other lawmakers that have left
Orinats Yerkir since May 5.
So far, all three Armenian ministers that have represented Orinats Yerkir have
ignored Baghdasarian’s demands to resign, choosing instead to remain in the
government. One of them, Education Minister Sergo Yeritsian, was the party’s
deputy chairman until last Friday.
Two other prominent Orinats Yerkir figures, Mher Shahgeldian and Gagik
Mkheyan,
who head the parliament committees on defense and social affairs, announced
that they will formally quit with Baghdasarian at the end of this month.
Orinats Yerkir has also had five deputy ministers in the coalition cabinet of
President Robert Kocharian. Three of them said on Monday that they remain
loyal
to Baghdasarian and will comply with his orders.
“On Friday, after Artur Baghdasarian’s news conference, I handed the minister
[of labor] a letter to the prime minister asking him to relieve me of my
duties,” said Artsruni Aghajanian, deputy minister of labor and social
affairs.
“I am one of those individuals who participated in the party’s creation and
don’t find it moral to even consider staying [in the government].”
“I have abandoned the post of deputy minister to stay with my party,” said Ara
Grigorian, deputy minister of trade and economic development. “I tendered my
resignation on Friday.”
Similar decisions are understood to have been made by Gagik Aslanian, another
Baghdasarian loyalist who has served as deputy minister for local government,
as well as at least two regional vice-governors representing Orinats Yerkir.
Party sources claimed that “numerous” other, lower-level Orinats Yerkir
officials will follow suit after Baghdasarian formally ceases to be Parliament
Speaker. Parliament is expected to accept his resignation without a debate on
May 27.
It is still unclear who will replace Baghdasarian as Parliament Speaker.
Deputy
Speaker Tigran Torosian said Monday that it is early to speak about candidates
for the job, adding that the Armenian Parliament still has its speaker who is
carrying out his duties.

2) Turkey Threatens French with Sanctions over Armenian Genocide Law

ANKARA (AFP)–Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened France
with trade sanctions if it adopts a bill making it illegal to deny the
Armenian
genocide, a Turkish newspaper said Sunday.
“Patience has its limits. We do not have hatred (towards France) but we will
impose our sanctions,” the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet quoted Erdogan as saying
at a summit of Muslim countries on the Indonesian island of Bali.
French lawmakers are due to consider this Thursday a bill from the opposition
Socialist Party (PS) which would make anyone denying the Armenian genocide
liable to a five-year jail term and a 45,000 Euro (57,000 Dollar) fine.
French members of parliament should be “particularly sensitive” to the
issue of
possible sanctions since France is the number one investor in Turkey, Erdogan
said. “There will possibly be problems,” he added.
France has angered Ankara in the past over the Armenian genocide. In 2001 it
adopted a law officially recognizing the massacres that took place starting in
1915 as genocide.
Several French businesses were excluded from invitations to conduct
business in
Turkey amid calls for a boycott of French products following the 2001 law.
French exports to Turkey in 2001 law plunged by 3.53 billion dollars,
according
to Turkish figures. But analysts predict the latest law could have a far
greater impact on trade between the two countries than the 2001 bill.
Turkey has reached record rates of growth in the past five years and bilateral
trade between the countries in 2005 was worth at least 9.6 billion dollars.
The 430-member Turkish chamber of commerce has intensified appeals to French
leaders including a letter to President Jacques Chirac, urging them to abandon
Thursday’s vote.

3) US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Nominee Affirms Commitment to Peaceful
Resolution of Karabagh Conflict

YEREVAN (Yerkir)–During her Senate confirmation hearing Monday,
Ambassador-designate Anne Derse reiterated US policy for a peaceful, mutually
acceptable resolution to the Karabagh conflict, stating that “a return to
violence would be a tragedy.”
Ambassador-designate Anne Derse responded that if confirmed, she will work
toward expanding and strengthening US-Azerbaijan security cooperation and help
promote democracy and governance.
She said a peaceful settlement to the Karabagh conflict is critical to
achieving this goal and expressed hope that President of Armenia Robert
Kocharian and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev will work together on this
issue. She further stated that as Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the US
will
also urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to remain engaged in the process and
demonstrate political courage.
On the issue of democracy, Derse stressed the importance of a genuine
effort by
Azerbaijan to respect human rights in order to pursue democratic reform and
ensure long-term political stability.

4) Repatriation Efforts in Georgia to Negatively Affect Georgian Armenians

(Combined Sources)Zaza Imedashvili, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of
Housing and Refugees in Tbilisi, said that Georgia’s budget this year has
allocated 1,227,000 Lari (around 500,000 US Dollars), to resettle thousands of
Ajarian Georgians displaced by landslides and other natural disasters.
Close to 5,000 families, around 30,000 people all together, are expecting
resettlement any day now under a new government program, which is still at a
very early stage.
The program aims to resettle the ethnic Georgians in areas such as Tsalka and
Akhalkalaki, which have predominantly Armenian or Greek populations. 
“Everyone understands this policy here,” said Sevak Yeranosyan, an Armenian
resident of Ninotsminda district in the southern region of Javakheti. “They
[the Ajarians] will be resettled to Armenian villages so that there will be a
larger Georgian population here.”
“Their program is to populate our region with Georgians and Ajarians,” he
said.
The Georgian Government insists that the Ajarians are being moved to these
regions because of the cheaper housing that is available there.
The Georgian Government has also pledged to resettle Meskheti Turks in Georgia
by the year 2011, also in the predominantly Armenian populated region of
Samtskhe-Javakheti.

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