Author: Chaltikian Arsine

Republic party leader: New Times party is against consolidation of
opposition before elections, we are for maximal unification

2007-10-19 17:48:00

ArmInfo. Republic party leader Aram Sargsyan says in an interview with
ArmInfo.

He says that unlike New Times leader Aram Karapetyan who announced his
intention to run for president immediately after the parliamentary
elections without consulting with opposition forces, Republic party
believes that it needs contacts with opposition for the latter’s
maximal consolidation. He says the public pins hope with presidential
election and expects real changes in the country since the parliament
has become a secondary body. Such situation in the country will not
change for at least 50 years and we have no right to lose this chance
to offer the public a real alternative to the incumbent authorities,
Aram Sargsyan says.

Asked to explain the joint organization of rallies at the end of the
last parliamentary election campaign with Impeachment bloc and New
Times party, the oppositionist says that in a situation when the
country is considered occupied from the political point of view, it is
not important who is Bolshevik and who is Menshevik, it is important to
unite to liberate the country from occupants. To put it more clearly,
it was not important how many votes would receive Republic, Impeachment
or New Times we worked to leave as little votes to the pro-government
and near-government parties as possible.

A. Sargsyan says if there is no political culture in the country and
political parties do not act in accordance with political principles,
they cannot unite on the basis of ideology. It remains for them to
unite for the common goal – fight against the regime.

EXAMINATIONS OF "ARMENIAN LANGUAGE, LITERATURE", "MATHEMATICS" AND
"FOREIGN LANGUAGE" SUBJECTS TO BE EXPERIMENTED IN NUMBER OF SCHOOLS

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. Experimentations of common and final
examinations in the following subjects: "Armenian Language,
Literature", "Mathematics", and "Foreign Language", will be conducted
in a number of Armenian schools of general education. Content
experiments of models of examination tests in Mathematics will be
conducted in a number of schools of Yerevan and the region of Kotayk on
October 19. The experiments of the models of four foreign languages
(Russian, English, French, and German) are envisaged to be conducted in
Yerevan and the region of Tavush on October 24. And the experiments of
the new tests in the "Armenian Language, Literature" subject will be
held in a number of schools in Yerevan and the region of Armavir on
October 26.

According to the information provided by Manuk Mkrtchian, the acting
director of the Estimation and Testing Center, at the press conference
held on October 18, 500 school-leavers will take part in the
experimental examination of each of the subjects.

According to Manuk Mkrtchian, the draft test guidebooks of these
subjects are already ready and will be published by the beginning of
November, as well as be distributed to all the schools of Armenia free
of charge. The acting director of the Estimation and Testing Center
mentioned that subject specialists from higher educational
institutions, as well as from schools were included in the commissions,
which compiled the guidebooks: the presence of one teacher in those
commissions was obligatory. According to him, the number of two-forms
and questions having double answers has been decreased as much as
possible, so as no mess arises during the chacking and making the
results public.

In the words of Manuk Mkrtchian, the procedure of the organization
process of the state final and common entrance examinations will be
established by December.

The Associated Press State & Local Wire
October 18, 2007 Thursday 2:05 AM GMT

On U.S. tour, Armenian Church leader visits Baton Rouge, New Orleans

By DOUG SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer

The leader of the 7-million member Armenian Orthodox Church visited a
Louisiana church on Wednesday, greeting new parishioners but making
no reference to the political dispute on Capitol Hill over his
country’s bloody past.

Karekin II spoke to Baton Rouge parishioners without raising the
question of whether Congress should declare that Turks committed
genocide in the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in World War I.
Armenians have urged the U.S. House to approve such a resolution;
Turkey, an important American ally, vehemently denies the killings
amount to a genocide.

The church patriarch avoided the topic of the House vote, saying "We
are happy that the Armenian people have shaken off the difficulties
and heavy burden of genocide."

Karekin II has said he supports passage of the measure, and in
previous appearances in his monthlong tour has thanked the House
Foreign Relations Committee for approving it. His remarks Wednesday
were in Armenian, translated into English later by an aide.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday the prospects of a House vote on
Armenian genocide were uncertain, after several members pulled their
support over fears of souring U.S.-Turkish relations.

Baton Rouge was Karekin II’s latest stop in a U.S. tour that included
a stop at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 10 the day the House panel
approved the resolution declaring the killings a genocide. The
church’s top official in the U.S., Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, said
the timing was a coincidence.

"This is a pastoral journey that was planned about a year ago,"
Barsamian said.

On Tuesday, Karekin II was in New Orleans, where he helped paint a
Habitat for Humanity house being built for a musician whose home was
destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.

Much of his speech to Baton Rouge’s St. Garabed Armenian Church was
focused on faith, and on thanking the American people for welcoming
Armenians after they were driven out of their homeland.

"I’m sure my people will always be thankful to this nation," he said.

The Armenian Orthodox Church has roughly 1.5 members in the U.S., but
only about 200 in Louisiana, most of them in New Orleans and Baton
Rouge. St. Garabed, which opened several years ago, is its only
church in the state.

Parishioners said they were thrilled to get a visit from their
patriarch.

"Oh, my goodness," said Kaygee Montafian, a board member of the
church. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing."

Karekin II, head of the Armenian church since 1999, had an appearance
scheduled in Dallas on Thursday. His tour, to end on Nov. 1, includes
stops in Houston, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit.

On the Net:

POINT/COUNTERPOINT: PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH
By Melissa Garber

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, MA
Oct 18 2007

The Ottoman Turks committed genocide against the Armenian people.

This is a fact that cannot be denied or argued over by reasonable,
intelligent people. As many as 1.5 millions Armenians were
systematically massacred from 1915-1917 by the Young Turks, a group
of revolutionary leaders who rose to power within the Ottoman Empire.

Modern day Turkey refuses to discuss – much less acknowledge –
that this genocide had ever occurred. And, in order not to tarnish
military affairs with Turkey, members of the Bush administration have
been obstinately against officially recognizing the genocide as well.

The House, being as productive as they know how to be, is now trying
to pass a non-binding resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide.

The Turkish government has threatened that if this resolution passes,
Turkish ties with the United States will never be the same.

"If this resolution passed in the committee passes the House as
well, our military ties with the U.S. will never be the same again,"
Gen. Yasar Buyukanit told the daily Milliyet newspaper.

On Oct. 8, Kurdish rebels killed 13 Turkish soldiers. The Turkish
government could send troops into northern Iraq at any moment. Two
of our only allies in the Middle East, the Kurds and the Turks,
are ready for war; the only thing stopping Turkey is the United States.

If we lose diplomatic and military ties with Turkey, it will send
Iraq into even more chaos. Turkey will invade northern Iraq and go
to war against the Kurdish resistance.

According to NPR, 70 percent of supplies for U.S. troops in Iraq
travel through Turkey. How can Congress be so careless to think that
a non-binding resolution is more important than some semblance of
stability in Iraq and the well-being of our already overworked troops?

Nancy Pelosi argued that "because many of the survivors are very old,"
the bill needs to be passed. But this same bill was almost passed by
the Republicans in Congress during Clinton’s administration and the
survivors were very old then as well. Where was Democratic support
of it then?

FAO CERTIFIES EXISTENCE OF SWINE FEVER

Panorama.am
20:42 18/10/2007

"The results of tests by the FAO organization of the United Nations
(World Food Program) are already in Armenia. According to early
diagnoses, swine fever exists in Armenia," Grisha Baghyan, of the
Ministry of Agriculture, said during an interview with a Panorama.am
journalist.

A two-person group from FAO has arrived in Armenia, with
whom laboratory workers from the agriculture department have
collaborated. In Baghyan’s words, both equipment and experts exist in
Armenia, but that for certifying the existence of the disease tests
are needed. Baghyan said that the disease still hasn’t been put to
an end in Tavoush and Lori provinces. They have already slaughtered
some 4,800 sick animals.

Announced quarantines in these provinces are continuing. According
to 2006 statistics, in Tavoush and Lori there were 28,987 and 16,434
pigs, correspondingly.

We remind that the South Caucasus is now considered an area of swine
flu infection.

OSCE: CONVICTION OF HRANT DINK’S SON FOR "INSULTING TURKISHNESS" MORE PROOF ARTICLE 301 MUST BE ABOLISHED

armradio.am
19.10.2007 13:27

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti,
has called on Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to urgently
repeal Article 301 of Turkey’s Penal Code, which makes it an offence to
"insult Turkish identity" and which continues to target journalists
with dissenting views on history.

Haraszti’s wrote to the Prime Minister following the suspended one-year
jail sentence on 11 October of Arat Dink and Serkis Seropyan, the
editor-in-chief and owner of the Armenian-Turkish language weekly
Agos. The two were convicted for reprinting remarks made by murdered
journalist Hrant Dink, the father of Arat, in which he referred to
the 1915 killings of Armenians as "genocide", a term contested by
the Turkish authorities.

"This case proves that Article 301 is still being used to prosecute
journalists for discussing issues of obvious public interest,"
said Haraszti in the letter. "The failure to abolish this provision
potentially exposes dissenters to prosecution and violence."

Hrant Dink, a prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist, was shot outside
his Istanbul office in January 2007. He was appealing against a prior
conviction under Article 301 at the time, and was co-defendant in
the now adjudicated case.

"I have commended the swift action Turkish law enforcement authorities
took after the murder of Hrant Dink. Another important contribution to
avoiding similar crimes would be to repeal Article 301, which depicts
unconventional thinkers as enemies of ‘Turkishness’, and turns them
into an object of hatred in the eyes of fanatics and extremists,"
said Haraszti.

WAR OF RATINGS
Karen Nahapetyan

Hayots Ashkharh Daily, Armenia
Oct 18 2007

The results of the pre-election poll conducted by Armenian
Sociological, Association was not thrilling.

As it was expected the Republican Party has the greatest number of
supporters (20,4% of the polled), "Bargavach Hayastan" party is in
the second place, with 15,8%. Another three parties have recorded
approximately the same results – "Orinats Yerkir" (7,5%), "Heritage"
(7,1%), ARFD (7,0%).

The responses to the question, " Who would you vote for, had the
elections been hold this Sunday?" gave the following picture. Serge
Sargsyan – 31,8%, Raffi Hovhannisyan – 12,3%, Gagik Tsarukyan – 12,0%,
Arthur Baghdasaryan – 11,2%, and Artashes Geghamyan – 10,5%.

The other possible candidates for presidency fall significantly behind
the before mentioned five. Hence, Vazgen Manukyan obtained 3,9%,
Levon Ter-Petrosyan – 3,8%, Vardan Oskanyan – 3,5%, etc.

It won’t be surprising if tomorrow the affected political figures
accuse the sociologists of partiality.

Very few people believe in the impartiality of those who "take a
sample" from social moods. Like the journalists, the sociologists as
well are considered corrupted. It is a widespread opinion that there
is no independent sociological center in our reality. The classical
question, " In whose favor do you work?" given to the sociological
services is very actual.

As for the sociologists, they usually express two principled
opinions. First – "We are beyond politics?" and the second – " The
publication of exaggerated or lowered ratings don’t have any impact
on the election returns."

Anyway, the nearer the elections draw, the demand towards the
sociological predictions grows. Not only the possible candidates and
the parties backing them, but also the citizens feel the hypnotizing
influence of the ratings. The letter ones genetically tend to think
and act the way the majority does. More often they trust the results
of the polls more than themselves.

The "war of ratings" is in process. A "war", because sometimes there is
such a difference between the results of the ratings that it is rather
difficult to account for this circumstance by " statistical error".

Though the problem is not only in the rating itself, but the way
they are interpreted. Very often the ratings are identified with
pre-election predictions. Whereas rating and prediction are quite
different things. The election intentions of the voters and their real
behavior not always coincide. As they say in such cases, "To promise
doesn’t mean to marry?"

Therefore, when the analysts try to draw conclusions, based on
sociological data, they must take into consideration some myths
linked with them. Firstly – the myth saying that the rating reflects
the reality. The second myth – saying that we make judgments about
the moods of the electorate from the responses given by 2-3% of the
voters. But on the other hand, to say that the surveys are not true
is also not right.

In short, nothing unexpected or mysterious is going on with the
ratings. But the hue and cry and the misunderstandings around them
are too much. The interest towards all types of sociological surveys
is still great in our reality. More than the desire and ability to
understand how they get and what do those data reflect.

But, the widespread concentration on the ratings, in the pre-election
period, appears not only and not very much because of the leader’s
swaggering and their jealous interest towards one another’s
success. The problem is that rating-addiction sometimes turns into
a real politics.

In our view it would have been better for the sociologists to agree
upon the game-rules, on the eve of the presidential elections.

To set up principles of a corporate behavior, to combine the survey
results, to maintain the common methodology of the surveys. Because
the "war of ratings" is going to heat up.

EDITORIAL: TURKISH NOT-SO DELIGHT

OCRegister, CA
Oct 17 2007

Parliament could vote to OK raids in Iraq.

An Orange County Register editorial

To understand just how significant is the recent friction between
the United States and Turkey, let’s review a little history.

After World War I, when the Ottoman Empire, headquartered in Turkey,
was defeated, Turkey, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, decided to
modernize and established an explicitly secular government in that
Muslim-majority country. Turkey has been moving in the direction of
holding fair elections and so could be seen as developing a model
for a moderate, democratic Middle Eastern country.

After World War II, Turkey was assisted by the Marshall Plan and joined
NATO. It cooperated with the West consistently during the Cold War. Its
economy has been growing rapidly, becoming more market-oriented,
and is attracting significant foreign investment.

Its airbase at Incirlik is a key facility in supplying U.S. troops
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet the Turkish Parliament will vote today on a resolution authorizing
limited cross-border strikes into northern Iraq to chase down
guerrillas from the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). The PKK has been
staging raids from safe havens along the mountainous border between
Turkey and Iraq, killing 13 Turkish troops Sunday and 28 over the
past several weeks.

Northern Iraq, dominated by ethnic Kurds, has been the most stable
and hopeful part of Iraq during the post-invasion U.S. occupation,
and most Kurds are friendly toward the United States. Almost everybody
agrees that raids into northern Iraq by Turkish troops, even if they
narrowly targeted, are likely to destabilize the region and create
resentment that could lead to further conflict.

So how did we get to a situation in which a longtime U.S. ally is
poised to destabilize the most stable part of Iraq and make the
U.S. government’s job in Iraq noticeably more difficult?

Turkey believes, rightly or wrongly, that the de facto Kurdish
government in northern Iraq has done little or nothing to curb the PKK
incursions into Turkey. Turkey also seems to believe the U.S. could
have done more to stop the PKK from operating on Iraqi soil.

>From the Turkish perspective the U.S. invasion of Iraq stirred up
unneeded instability. Southeastern Turkey, bordering Iraq, has long
had a significant Kurdish population and a small but violent separatist
movement, but things had been fairly calm. However, the establishment
of a de facto Kurdistan in northern Iraq raised fears that Kurds in
Turkey would demand to be reunited with their ethnic brethren in an
enlarged Kurdistan that would include part of what is now Turkey,
and the PKK raids have made those fears concrete.

Add the passage by a House committee last week of a resolution to
declare a "genocide" the World War I-era slaughter of more than a
million ethnic Armenians by the former Ottoman Turkish government,
and you have a perfect storm. It seems odd for the present-day Turkish
government to be sensitive about what the regime it displaced did
some 90 years ago, but it is.

Even if the parliament authorizes cross-border raids, we hope Turkey
will try persuasion and diplomacy before unleashing its military. But
we wouldn’t bet on it. A longstanding alliance may be yet another
victim of the ill-considered war on Iraq.

ACCORDING TO RA MP, THERE ARE NO MOODS DESIRABLE FOR LEVON TER-PETROSIAN’S SUPPORTERS IN SOCIETY YET

Noyan Tapan
Oct 18 2007

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 18, NOYAN TAPAN. The Republican Party of Armenia (RPA)
treats quietly the rumors on possibility of Levon Ter-Petrosian’s
running for the 2008 elections, as they do not doubt that their own
candidate will win the elections. Hamlet Haroutiunian, a member of the
RPA parliamentary faction, the Chairman of the Artsakh compatriotic
union, stated at the October 18 press conference. He considers that
society still lacks the political moods that L. Ter-Petrosian’s
supporters would like to see.

Consequently, as the MP from RPA said, the expectations of some media
that RPA "should convene special consultations and make analyses"
on its further tactics in connection with L. Ter-Petrosian’s possible
running for the elections are ungrounded.

H. Haroutiunian reminded that RPA’s next congress will be held on
November 10.

UNFIT FOR COMMAND
by Patrick J. Buchanan

The Conservative Voice, NC
.html
Oct 16 2007

Observing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Democratic House imperil a
U.S.-Turkish alliance of 60 years — by formally charging Turkey with
genocide in a 1915 massacre of the Armenians — the question comes
to mind:

Does this generation have the maturity to lead America?

About the horrors visited on Armenians in 1915, that year of Turkish
triumph over the Royal Navy in the Dardanelles, which led to the
ouster of First Lord Winston Churchill, and of victory over the
British-French-ANZAC invasion force on Gallipoli, there is no doubt.

Between 1915 and 1923, as modern Turkey was being torn out of the
womb of a dying Ottoman Empire, a million or more Armenians died in
massacres and a forced exodus. It was one of the monstrous crimes
and terrible tragedies of a 20th century that abounded in both.

That Armenian-Americans wish to have their holocaust recognized is
understandable. But that Democrats could not put off that request —
for Congress to officially charge Turkey with genocide, 90 years ago —
is not.

For what was the necessity for the House to take this sensitive moment
in U.S.-Turkish relations to rub our allies’ noses in century-old
sins by equating their fathers with Hitler and Himmler?

What was their motive?

Answer: House Democrats are pandering to an Armenian lobby that has
long sought to have the United States formally declare that what
Turks did to them is exactly what Nazis did to the Jews. The genocide
resolution now goes to the floor, where Pelosi promises swift passage.

One trusts Democrats will be rewarded, for the damage they have done
to the national interest is great.

In Turkey, America has always been regarded more warmly than the
other Western democracies. We never declared war on Turkey in 1917.

We were not party to the secret Sykes-Picot deal that carved up the
Ottoman Empire. Though Woodrow Wilson agreed in Paris to accept a
U.S. trusteeship of Constantinople, which would have put us on a
collision course with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s nation, the Senate
rejected it.

When, after World War II, Stalin pressed down on Turkey, the Turks
were among the first beneficiaries of Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine
aid. Turks reciprocated by sending their sons to fight beside Americans
in Korea. They were then brought into NATO.

The Turks accepted U.S. intermediate-range ballistic missiles targeted
on the Soviet Union, then accepted their removal as part of JFK’s
secret deal with Nikita Khrushchev to end the Cuban missile crisis.

No nation has been a better friend or more reliable ally. Since
the first days of the Cold War, Turkey hosted U.S. bases. And few
nations are more crucial than this land bridge between Islam and the
West, between the Middle East and Europe. Turkey is a crossroads of
the world.

But the relationship has deteriorated.

The Turks opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, arguing, rightly it turns
out, that Saddam was no threat to the region. The Turks refused to
allow us to use their territory for a northern front in the invasion
of Iraq. Yet, today, Turkey is indispensable to Gen.

Petraeus. Turkish drivers deliver munitions and supplies overland to
Iraq. Turkish bases, like Incirlik, are used by the U.S. Air Force
to support American troops in Iraq.

Ankara’s reward: to have Congress vote to condemn Turkey’s founding
fathers as genocidal murderers.

Understandably, Turks are coming to see the alliance as a one-way
street and themselves as forgotten friends. For we have failed to
convince the Kurds we shelter in northern Iraq to rein in their
terrorist cousins, who are using Iraqi territory as a privileged
sanctuary from which to attack the Turkish army. Two dozen Turkish
soldiers have been murdered in two separate attacks in recent weeks
by the PKK.

When Pancho Villa raided Columbus, N.M., in 1916, and killed dozens of
Americans, Wilson sent Gen. Pershing and an army of 12,000 into Mexico
to run him down. Turks have the same right of hot pursuit, and they
feel the same rage. For the Leninists of the PKK were responsible for
a 15-year war in which some 37,000 Turks and Kurds died before 1999,
when a truce was declared.

By reigniting a war of terror in Turkey and using bases in Iraq from
which to attack, the PKK appears to be provoking a Turkish invasion
of Iraq, which could deal a mortal blow to the U.S.-Turkish alliance
and would be a disaster for U.S. policy in Iraq. Meanwhile, Iranian
Kurds of a related terror group, PEJAK, have been conducting attacks
inside Iran. Iran, like Turkey, has been responding with artillery
fire into Iraq.

The United States needs to sit down with our Kurdish friends and
explain that in return for U.S. protection, they are to rein in the
PKK and PEJAK before they drag us into a wider war.

As for Ms. Pelosi & Co., they seem determined to prove the point
that, no matter the failures of Bush & Co., the Democrats are unfit
for command.

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web page at