Author: Boshkezenian Garik

Hurriyet, Turkey
Dec 20 2009

Turkey edges further toward EU

Sunday, December 20, 2009
BRUSSELS – Agence France-Presse

The European Union is set to open formal talks with Turkey on a new
chapter amid growing skepticism and dismay over the EU reforms and
policies toward Greek Cyprus. Some experts say the accession talks
need to be speed up
Turkey will take another small step toward European Union membership
Monday despite its much-criticized policy on Greek Cyprus and some
European reticence to accept a large, mainly Muslim nation.

The EU will open formal talks with Turkey on environmental issues, the
12th of 35 policy chapters that any candidate nation must successfully
negotiate prior to membership. But some analysts say this is more
wheel spinning than progress.

`The rhythm of the accession talks remains singularly slow,’ said
Didier Billion, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic and
International Relations in Paris. Michael Emerson, an analyst at the
Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies, is even less
impressed.

`This is an unreal exercise,’ he told Agence France-Presse.

`Some good spirit in the European Commission has decided to keep the
process going along, but fundamentally it is blocked politically at
the highest level and in the most fundamental way,’ Emerson added.

Since Turkey officially opened membership talks in 2005, it has opened
the 35 EU policy chapters at a rate of three per year. During that
time, it has managed to successfully negotiate and close just one of
those, the one dealing with science and research.

Eight chapters remain totally blocked due to Ankara’s stance over not
opening its borders with Greek Cyprus, an EU member. The island of
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey intervened in response
to an Athens-engineered coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island
with Greece.

`Privileged’ offer

On top of this, there are more fundamental issues at play, with
France, Germany and Austria among the EU nations that would prefer to
give Turkey some kind of `privileged partnership’ status rather than
full-blown membership, an option rejected by Ankara.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has led this lobby, which does not
see Turkey as a European country. `We want Turkey to be a bridge
between East and West,’ Sarkozy declared in June.

Europeans are also very critical of the slow pace of internal reform
in Turkey, which, unlike the Western Balkans nations, has no guarantee
of eventual EU membership.

EU foreign ministers early this month stopped short of imposing
further sanctions, though it was a very mixed scorecard with
acknowledged progress in some areas, notably the normalization of
relations with Armenia. `Progress is now expected without further
delay,’ the foreign ministers warned in a joint statement.

Greek Cypriot Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou displayed his
country’s frustration by announcing that his government would attach
new conditions to five more unopened policy chapters, making a total
of six.

Days later, there was more controversy when Turkey’s Constitutional
Court banned the country’s pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or
DTP. The bloc has expressed concerns over the court’s decision, and a
senior EU official has said the ban might also sabotage the Ankara
government’s recent initiative aimed at giving more rights to the
country’s Kurds.

Meanwhile, Croatia, which is much farther along the accession track
than Turkey, will take another step Monday by successfully closing two
more of the negotiating chapters, tipping it toward the halfway mark,
with 17 of the 35 successfully completed and just a handful left to
open.

Croatia’s path toward the EU has not been all smooth sailing, either.
Slovenia blocked its progress for almost a year over a border dispute.
The talks have started moving recently after the two nations agreed to
put their dispute to international arbitration.

But Ljubljana has not yet ratified the deal and is continuing to block
three chapters ` on environment, fisheries and foreign and defense
policy.

The EU also wants to see fuller cooperation from Zagreb with the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, or ICTY,
and more progress in the battle against corruption. Nevertheless, the
European Commission has said it would be possible to complete the
accession negotiations next year and fulfill Croatia’s ambition of
joining the EU in 2011.

VIABILITY OF ARMENIA’S NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORK CANNOT BE ENSURED BY MARKET MECHANISMS ONLY

Noyan Tapan
Dec 18, 2009

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 18, NOYAN TAPAN. A workshop-discussion on problems of
ensuring the viability of Armenia’s national telecommunication network
and information security was conducted at the Armenian Center for
National and International Studies (ACNIS) on December 17. During the
event, Ph.D. Karen Matevosian underlined the importance of viability
of information and computer networks under the conditions of impacts
from outside.

When speaking about his methods of the problem’s solution, he said that
the use of these methods in the country will contribute to reliability
of the national networks, information security and viability. According
to him, this problem of great importance to Armenia cannot be dealt
with by market mechanisms only: a positive result can be received
in 3-4 years if the state efficiently performs the functions of the
sector’s coordination and the regulation of cooperation and links
among the participants.

ACNIS Administrative Director, Ph.D. Karapet Kalenchenko reminded
that as long ago as the 1970s, in the Soviet time, Armenia was the
first country to develop, build and introduce an intercity telegraph
automatic relay center in Yerevan by using ES-1030 and ES-1045
computers produced at the Yerevan Research Institute of Mathematical
Machines. "The author of those relay centers was Karen Matevosian
who together with a small team managed to introduce them and provide
coverage for almost the whole territory of the Soviet Union. Now
Matevosian is proposing a new idea related to safe operation of
Armenia’s information network," K. Kalenchenko said.

ANCA CONFRONTS US SILENCE ON GENOCIDE DURING SENATE PANEL

Asbarez
imony/1209_Sen_Judiciary.pdf
Dec 18th, 2009

Nahapetian Testimony Before Senate Panel Challenges U.S. Complicity
in Turkey’s Denial as Contributing to Ongoing Cycle of Genocide

WASHINGTON, DC – The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)
this week called the attention of an influential U.S. Senate panel
to how the failure of U.S. policy-makers to confront past genocides
has materially contributed to an international environment which
tolerates continued crimes against humanity, reported the Armenian
National Committee of America (ANCA).

"Considering… the moral and legal obligations we have undertaken
as parties to the Genocide Convention, it is truly astonishing that
the United States has more recently pursued a policy of complicity in
Turkey’s state-sponsored denial of the Armenian Genocide and has even
gone to the lengths of assisting Turkey in covering up a crime that
was publicly cited by Raphael Lemkin as one of the major motivating
factors in the very drafting of the Genocide Convention," explained
ANCA Government Affairs Director Kate Nahapetian in written testimony
submitted to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and
the Law for a hearing titled "The Law of the Land: U.S. Implementation
of Human Rights Treaties."

Nahapetian continued, noting that, "Turkey’s success in silencing
one of the most powerful countries in the world on one of the best
documented cases of genocide emboldens other states to commit genocide
and undermines the ability of the U.S. and the international community
to prevent crimes against humanity. The starkest example of this
consequence is Sudan’s mimicking of Turkish genocide denial tactics
and the growing alliance between these two countries."

Read the complete text of Nahapetian’s testimony.

DO NOT BOTHER HNCHAKS

Lragir.am
17/12/09

The developments inside the Social-Democratic Hnchakyan party
appeared in the centre of the attention of the Armenian media. As
we know, a group fights against another one within the party, the
one accuses the other of breaking the party’s order, of weakening
the party, of fulfilling a governmental order and of other mortal
crimes. The attention of the Armenian media is focused on these
happenings which became a topic of active discussion. These events
in the Social-Democratic Hnchakyan party pretend to compete with the
Armenian and Turkish relations from the point of their media covering.

There are a number of circumstances which justify the attention towards
what is happening in the Hnchakyan party. One of them is that the party
is a component of the oppositional Armenian National Congress, and the
other is that the government is said to have its share in the events
happening in the party. There seems not to be anything else for what
to pay attention to the inner-Hnchakyan events even if it is considered
one of the Armenian traditional parties, one of the first ones.

But is being a member of the HAK and a target of the government enough
to appear in the centre of the public attention? Hardly. After all,
the power of the Armenian National Congress is not in having or not
having the Hnchakyan party as a member, and the guarantee of the
government success is not the splitting of the party, as some people
presume. The point is that if Congress succeeded, it is because only
those who leave it are harmed but not the HAK itself. Of course,
there can be a critical point beyond which if parties leave the
Congress, it will also be harmed. But this point perhaps is still
too far and there is nothing worrying the Congress, moreover, the
Congress-society connection is based on completely other perceptions,
rather than numeral ones.

The Hnchakyan splitting can hardly be a guarantee of security for
the government. Maybe the government thinks that by splitting the
Hnchakyan party, it may harm the HAK. This may be a justified strategy
– to divide the Congress little by little leaving there only three
parties in the end. But the government is likely to know that the
number of parties does not determine the public perceptions. If it
was so, the victory of the government in all national elections had
to be instant because every time several decades of parties and NGOs
support it. But all the same, it makes no sense for the society,
and the government again has to rig the election. The government is
likely to have understood this simple truth.

What is happening in reality? It is not so essential because in
Armenia there are many other essential issues which need attention
and a solution. And the members of the Hnchakyan party solve their
problems. Let them do that. All those parties which can split, will
split. It only promotes the revelation of the situation. What can we
do if in Armenia the situation is so sad that the more you reveal it
the more it is to be revealed?

YSU STUDENTS PROTEST AMENDMENTS TO LAW ON PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
16.12.2009 16:44 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Sixty four students of the law department of Yerevan
State University have released a statement to express concerns over
the government-approved bill on introduction of amendments to the RA
law On Public Organizations.

The bill conflicts with the principles of a legal and democratic state
and impedes development of civil society in Armenia, the students said.

They called on parliamentary political forces to vote down the bill.

NKR PRESIDENT CONGRATULATES SERGEY BAGAPSH ON BEING ELECTED ABKHAZIA PRESIDENT

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
16.12.2009 19:45 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On 15 December, NKR President Bako Sahakyan sent
a congratulatory letter to Sergey Bagapsh in connection with his
re-election as President of Abkhazia.

"On behalf of the people and authorities of NKR, I cordially
congratulate you on victory in the Presidential elections of the
Republic of Abkhazia. These elections became the first presidential
elections of the internationally recognized Abkhazia, with your
significant personal contribution to this process.

I am confident that your experience and knowledge will contribute to
further development and strengthening of the Republic of Abkhazia,"
presidential statement concluded.

ISSUES OF ARMENIA-EU COOPERATION DISCUSSED AT A WORKING DINNER

armradio.am
15.12.2009 16:59

Today President Serzh Sargsyan had a working dinner with the
Ambassadors of EU member states accredited in Armenia and the Head
of the European Commission in Armenia.

The President of the Republic of Armenia and the EU Ambassadors
exchanged views on the expanding agenda of cooperation between Armenia
and the European Union, summed up the results of the past year and
spoke about the future programs.

KAREKIN II THANKS NEWLY-APPOINTED SLOVAKIA AMBASSADOR FOR ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
15.12.2009 19:52 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II met
newly-appointed Slovakia Ambassador to RA Josef Migas in Holy
Echmiadzin today, December 15.

Welcoming Josef Migas, Karekin II expressed hope that the Ambassador
will contribute to further collaboration and establishment of friendly
ties between the states. Catholicos of All Armenians thanked the
newly-appointed Slovakia Ambassador for Armenian Genocide recognition.

The parties also touched upon spiritual issues of both nations,
emphasizing the important role of the church in strengthening of
spiritual values, Holy Echmiadzin press service reported.

NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS EXCEEDED ORANGE ARMENIA’S EXPECTATIONS

Tert.am
15.12.09

In the month and half since entering the market, Orange Armenia has
acquired 100,000 customers, though France Telecom (Orange Armenia)
Director General Bruno Duthoit, speaking at a press conference today,
anticipates the company will have signed on 150,000 customers by the
end of this year. In addition, there are 5,000 customers who’ve signed
on to Orange Armenia’s internet services.

According to Duthoit, the amount of customers is curently greater than
what he expected prior to entering the market. Despite the serious
indicators of growth, it seems that the revenue earned doesn’t
necessarily translate to profitability.

"Investments of 95 million USD in total were anticipated for this year,
but if we also take into consideration market expenses, [and] licensing
fees, then already 140 millon EUR has been spent," said Duthoit.

Despite being accused of "dumping" (a type of predatory pricing policy)
in its mobile and internet services, the Orange Armenia Director
General says there is no such policy in place. "That is not so. Until
our entry [into the market], fees for internet services in Armenia were
quite high. After a suggestion by Orange, other companies similarly
reviewed their fees and today, in comparison with other countries,
Armenian fees [for internet services] are normal," noted Duthoit.

SLOVAKIA APPOINTS NEW AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
14.12.2009 20:57 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Newly-appointed Slovakian Ambassador to Armenia
Josef Migash (residence: Moscow) Monday submitted the copies of his
credentials to RA Deputy FM Arman Kirakosyan.

Congratulating the diplomat, Kirakosyan expressed hope for further
deepening of Armenian-Slovakian relations in both bilateral and
multi-lateral formats. Parties also stressed the importance of
developing trade-economic cooperation.

Armenian Deputy FM briefed to the guest on current stage of
Armenian-Turkish rapprochement and Karabakh conflict settlement,
RA MFA press service reported.