Author: Chaltikian Arsine

NUMBER OF POLYCLINIC SERVICE USERS GROWS IN 2006 IN SYUNIK

Noyan Tapan
Feb 06 2007

KAPAN, FEBRUARY 6, NOYAN TAPAN. 71.1 mln drams was received against
48.5 mln drams envisaged by the estimate on the line of paid services
at Syunik region’s healthcare sphere’s medical institutions in 2006
and 60 mln drams (nearly 160 thousand USD) was received from another
financial sources. The financing of region’s health system on the
line of medical aid and service within the framework of state order
was fulfilled by 100%.

As Noyan Tapan correspondent was informed by Ashot Tsatrian, Head
of Health and Social Security Department of Syunik Administration,
428 thousand people used polyclinical services in 2006 in the region
against 360 thousand of previous year. Seven thousand people were
treated at hospitals.

It was mentioned that during the previous year the region’s medical
institutions were replenished with new medical equipment amounting
to 178 mln drams, which exceeds 2005 index twice. The repairs done in
the region’s medical institutions also increased as compared with the
previous year: 58 mln drams was allocated in 2006 for this purpose
against 35 mln drams in 2005.

Agence France Presse — English
February 2, 2007 Friday 10:49 AM GMT

Turkish security forces probed for posing with alleged murderer

The Turkish security forces faced fresh embarrassment on Friday, when
it emerged that some of its members had posed for "souvenir pictures"
with the alleged murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Film footage and photos leaked to the media showed the teenage
gunman, who has confessed to the murder, posing with a Turkish flag,
flanked by two members of the security forces. Behind them is a
calendar featuring a Turkish flag and the words of the country’s
founder, Ataturk: "The motherland’s soil is sacred. It cannot be left
to its destiny."

The footage was filmed in the northern city of Samsun, where
17-year-old Ogun Samast was arrested 32 hours after Dink was gunned
down in central Istanbul on January 19. Dink was loathed by
nationalists for describing as "genocide" the massacres of Armenians
under the Ottoman Empire.

Samsun’s chief prosecutor, Ahmet Gokcinar, told Anatolia news agency
that an investigation had been launched into the incident, targeting
both the city’s police and a paramilitary force policing rural areas.

The police are already facing allegations that they had received a
tip-off last year about a plot to kill Dink but did not follow up on
the intelligence.

They are also under fire for failing to grant Dink special
protection, even though the journalist mentioned in articles in his
bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos about receiving threats and
hate mail.

Furious over the footage, the press accused the Samsun security
forces of treating Samast as a "hero".

"A kiss on the forehead is the only thing the murderer was not
given," growled liberal paper Radikal. "This is the picture of the
mindset that killed Dink".

"Shoulder to shoulder with the gunman," trumpeted the
mass-circulation Sabah newspaper, while the popular Vatan said the
footage was "as grave as the assassination itself".

Apart from Samast, seven other suspects have been arrested over the
murder. All come from the northern city of Trabzon. The nationalist
stronghold has come under the spotlight with a series of violent
incidents, including the murder of an Italian Catholic priest by a
16-year-old boy last year.

The probe has so far suggested that the suspects, all young people,
did not belong to any known underground group but were under the sway
of ultra-nationalist ideas and wanted to take the law into their own
hands against what they saw as rising threats to Turkey’s unity.

Trabzon’s governor and police chief were removed from office last
week.

The Japan Times, Japan
Feb 2 2007

Declining tolerance of dangerous words

By GEORGE P. FLETCHER

NEW YORK — Nowadays, words are often seen as a source of
instability. The violent reactions last year to the caricatures of
the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper saw a confused
Western response, with governments tripping over their tongues trying
to explain what the media should and should not be allowed to do in
the name of political satire.

Then Iran trumped the West by sponsoring a conference of Holocaust
deniers, a form of speech punished as criminal almost everywhere in
Europe.

As Turks well know, it is dangerous to take a position on the
Armenian genocide of 1915. The most recent Nobel laureate in
literature, Orhan Pamuk, was prosecuted in Istanbul for denying
Turkey’s official history by saying that the Armenian genocide
actually occurred. Other Turks have faced prosecution in Western
Europe for saying that it did not.

So words are now clearly a battlefield in the cultural conflict
between Islam and the West. The West has learned that, simply as a
matter of self-censorship, not legal fiat, newspapers and other media
outlets will not disseminate critical pictures of Muhammad, and the
pope will no longer make critical comments about Islam. But these
gestures of cooperation with Muslim sensibilities have not been met
by reciprocal gestures.

Instead, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran’s president, has threatened to
wipe Israel off the map. The Israeli Foreign Ministry now seeks
prosecution of Ahmedinejad for incitement to commit genocide — a
violation of international law.

But the Israeli press is also bellicose. Israeli newspapers regularly
carry stories about why Israel may need to attack Iran to prevent it
from acquiring an arsenal of nuclear weapons. U.S. President George
W. Bush has made similarly ominous, if more vague, statements about
Iran. In Germany, preparing and calling for preemptive military
strikes from within the government are subject to criminal sanctions.

The world’s different legal systems have never been in much agreement
about the boundaries of free speech. Even between good neighbors like
Canada and the United States, there is little agreement about
punishing hate speech. Canadians punish racial insults, but Americans
do not, at least if the issue is simply one of protecting the dignity
of racial minorities.

But threatening violence is more serious. Many countries are united
in supporting the principle that if, say, Ahmedinejad does meet the
criteria for incitement of genocide, he should be punished in the
International Criminal Court. Indeed, the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda punished radio station operators who made
aggressive public broadcasts urging Hutus to pick up their machetes
and murder Tutsis.

A decade ago there would have been a good argument in international
law that the Hutu-Tutsi example supports prosecution only after the
damage has been done. All the international precedents — from
Nuremberg to the present — concern international intervention after
mass atrocities. Domestic police may be able to intervene to prevent
crime before it occurs, but in the international arena there is no
police force that can do that.

It follows, therefore, that the crime of incitement should apply only
to cases like Rwanda, where the radio broadcasts actually contributed
to the occurrence of genocide. In cases where bellicose leaders make
public threats to "bury" another country (remember Khrushchev?) or to
wipe it off the map, the courts should wait, it was said, until some
harm occurs.

But the international community has become ever more intrusive in
using legal remedies against persons who engage in provocative and
dangerous speech. In September 2005, the United Nations Security
Council passed Resolution 1624 — paradoxically, with American
approval — calling upon all member states to enact criminal
sanctions against those who incite terrorism. The model of incitement
they had in mind is the same one that British Prime Minister Tony
Blair has publicly invoked: Muslim leaders standing up in their
mosques and urging their congregations to go out and kill infidels.

Americans have traditionally said that, absent a risk of immediate
unlawful violence, this form of speech should be protected under the
First Amendment. U.S. courts reasoned that it is better to allow the
release of hateful sentiments than to call attention to them by
showcasing them in court. But when it comes to terrorism in today’s
world, most countries, including the world’s democracies, are not as
tolerant as they used to be.

So the traditional liberal position in support of giving wide scope
to freedom of speech, even for extremists, is losing ground
everywhere. When it comes to fighting terrorism and the prospect of
genocide, the world is now becoming afraid of dangerous words.

George P. Fletcher, Cardozo professor of jurisprudence at Columbia
University, is author of "Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the
Age of Terrorism." Copyright 2007 Project Syndicate/Institute for
Human Sciences ()

2a1.html

Armenian EyeCare Project marks the beginning of its new operational season

ArmRadio.am
02.02.2007 15:18

The Armenian EyeCare Project (AECP) will mark the beginning of its new
operational season in February 2007 by conducting free of charge eye
screening for the vulnerable population of the Kanaeker-Zeitun
district in Yerevan in close collaboration with the District
Municipality. In the scope of the USAID/AECP Primary and Opthalmologic
Healthcare Alliance, fifteen schools including four special schools,
fifteen kindergartens, three soup kitchens as well as the vulnerable
population of the district will participate in eye screenings
scheduled to commence on February 19th and last until mid March.

Earlier this year the AECP finalized its activities in Ararat region
of Armenia where following over two months of intensive work 13, 765
people were screened including 8, 084 children, 1, 080 patients were
referred to the Mobile Eye Hospital (MEH) for further examination and
treatment, 349 were operated on and 124 patients received laser
treatment. As an additional service provided in the scope of the
project, over 1, 700 eye glasses were prescribed and delivered to the
most vulnerable population of Ararat region.

According to the AECP Yerevan Office Country Director Ms. Nune
Yeghiazaryan, the major priorities for the organization this year
include eye screening missions to Kotayk, Lori, Shirak and Tavush
regions of Armenia that are scheduled to commence from March
2007. Additionally, an extensive Public Education and Communication
campaign is planned to improve public attitudes towards eye care and
prevention and to encourage the population in the regions to attend
free of charge eye screening offered by the AECP.

One of the key highlights of the year 2007 will be the Second Medical
International Congress to be held in Armenia in June. During the
conference the AECP will lead the Satellite Symposia on Ophthalmology
with the participation of world leading specialists and doctors from
Armenia. The Symposia will be followed by master classes conducted by
famous opthalmologists from around the world in the Wet Lab Center
recently established by the AECP with the generous donation from
Pfaiser International.

Summarizing the results of the year 2006, Ms. Yeghiazaryan stressed
that last year had been a year of considerable progress and growth for
the organization. `We managed to not only increase the number of
patients benefiting from the AECP services, but also to improve the
accessibility to eye care for the pouplation in some of the most
remote parts of Armenia,’ ` Ms. Yeghiazaryan said.

In a constant effort to help eliminate preventable blindness in
Armenia since its inception in 1992 to date, the AECP has already
reached over 130,000 people across Armenia who benefited from high
quality eye care services offered in the scope of the project.

Today, Azerbaijan
Jan 31 2007

Tahir Tagizade: "No one can deprive Azerbaijan of right to restore
territorial integrity"

31 January 2007 [17:01] – Today.Az

"Azerbaijan has the right to restore its territorial integrity, and
no one can deprive us of it. We won’t give up this right either,"
Foreign Affairs Ministry press and information policy department
chief Tahir Tagizade told while commenting on Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanian’s statement during his visit in Netherlands
that Azerbaijan will never dare to attack Armenia.

Tahir Tagizade stated that Azerbaijan has never been against the
territorial integrity of any country and attacked sovereignty of any
country, APA reports.

Vardan Oskanian had regarded had co-chairs’ proposals as logical,
saying "If these propositions are considered in the settlement, the
conflict will find a solution not contradicting Armenia’s national
interests, and ensuring the principles of security and
self-determination of Nagorno Karabakh people and their continual
contacts to Armenia.

Tahir Tagizade said he has to correct Armenian FM’s statement.

"Matter is not Nagorno Karabakh people, but Azerbaijani and Armenian
communities living in the region. These people have the right of
self-determination, but only within Azerbaijan’s territorial
integrity. This may be the highest authority within Azerbaijan. As
for Armeni’s relations with Nagorno Karabakh, Armenian Diaspora in
Nagorno Karabakh has the right to make relations with Armenia as
Azerbaijan has the same right with Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. We
have declared not once about the infrastructural projects considering
both of these issues. As for the security, Azerbaijani officials have
stated that the first phrase of the settlement includes the security
of Nagorno Karabakh people and strengthening of mutual confidence,"
he said.

URL:

IMPORTERS OF "JERMUK" AND "KILIKIA" ARRESTED IN AKHALKALAK

AKHALKALAK, FEBRUARY 1, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. A masked
detachment of special importance of the Georgian Police
demonstratively arrested in Akhalkalak Meruzhan Karoyan and Armen
Uzunian, importers of the "Jermuk" mineral water and "Kilikia" beer
from the RA to Javakhk. The Javakhk-Info agency informs about it.

At about 17:00 on January 30, the Police employees of special
importance jointly with the Akhalkalak Regional Police employees
unexpectedly attacked on the house of Meruzhan Karoyan living in the
street of Malkhasian, Akhalkalak, arrested Meruzhan and his partner
Armen Uzunian.

According to Javakhk-Info, citizens of the Armenian origin, appeared
in the place of incident by a chance, attempted without result to stop
the arrested ones’ tendentious removal to Akhaltskha where, unlike in
Akhalkalak, Georgian powers feel themselves safe.

About 100 inhabitants of Akhalkalak among who there were women as
well, attempted to close the road. But the employees of the
detachment of special importance directed burst of machine-gun fire
towards the population.

The Armenian population of Javakhk estimates the happened as an
instigator action addressed to deepening of the atmosphere of danger
in the country and terror towards the Armenian population. The
society, indignant of this case, created a commission in defence of
Meruzhan Karoyan and Armen Uzunian.

In Akhalkalak citizen Norayr Tepoyan’s words, Meruzhan and Armen were
not guilty, they simply became victims of the policy. "We shall demand
to set them free, reveal the real reason of the arrest," he said.

Ïðàî ûáîðà, Azerbaijan
Democratic Azerbaijan
Feb 1 2007

Statement of OSCE Co-chairs Made Public
01.02.2007

OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Yuriy Merzlyakov (Russia), Bernard
Fassier (France) and Matthew Bryza (USA) dealing with regulation of
Armenian-Azerbaijani, Nagorni Garabagh conflict made statement.
Statement, received by Azer-Tac from US Embassy to Baku, says that
co-chairs are satisfied with constructive approach demonstrated by
leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the course of recent talks held
to regulate the conflict.
Co-chairs underline that they are inspired by constructiveness
demonstrated by leaders of both states while defining combined
principles to regulate Nagorni Garabagh conflict.
Statement touches upon meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of
Azerbaijan and Armenia, Elmar Mamadyarov, Vardan Oskanyan with Minsk
Group co-chairs held January 23 in Moscow, and meeting of co-chairs
with President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, January 23, and leader of
separatist regime in Nagorni Garabagh, Arkadiy Gukasyan, January 25,
and President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, in Yerevan.
Evaluating efforts of all parties they met co-chairs stress that
searching for ways for stable and peaceful regulation of
Nagorni-Garabagh conflict is referred to Presidents of Azerbaijan and
Armenia. Co-chairs will assist them in this respect.
Statement reads that both presidents actively defend their national
interests the way that provides opportunity to continue peace
process. Co-chairs call on parties to prepare societies of their
countries to compromise and to the search for measures for trust and
mutual understanding and maintenance of cease-fire regime at the same
time maintaining achieved results.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Erdogan against canceling 301 article, but says it’s possible to make
changes in it
30.01.2007 14:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan
speaks against canceling the 301st article of the
Turkish Penal Code, but he says it is possible to make
some changes in it. In his words, the matter is not
about full cancellation of the article. Alongside he
added that the Turkish government is ready to discuss
offers from non-governmental organizations and other
interested parties on the issue. The well-known 301st
article, which foresees criminal punishment for
`insulting Turkishness’, has being criticized by
international structures, including the European
Union, since it limits freedom if speech in the
country. Armenian-Turkish bilingual `Agos’
editor-in-chief Hrant Dink was sentenced to 6-month
suspended imprisonment under this article. After his
assassination the claims to cancel that very law
strengthened both from international and Turkish
non-governmental organizations, Cihan News Agency
reports.

RA DM: JOINING CSTO WAX OF GREAT IMPORTANCE FROM VIEWPOINT OF MILITARY
COOPERATION

Yerevan, January 29. ArmInfo. Joining the CSTO was of great importance
from the viewpoint of military cooperation, RA Defense Minister, Serzh
Sargssyan, said at yesterday’s solemn event devoted to the Day of Army
and the 15th anniversary of the Armenian Army creation.

It has become not only one of the constituents of the Republic’s
military security but also created new opportunities for further
expansion of military cooperation between Armenia and Russia. "Today,
the military cooperation between the two countries is being efficiently
developed both in a bilateral format and within the frames of CSTO. At
the same time, Armenia developed a cooperation with the USA, the
European countries and the Euroatlantic structures. In particular,
Armenia has joined the "Partnership for Peace" NATO’s Program, while a
program of individual partnership with NATO had been approved in 2005",
the Minister said. He also noted a successful participation of the
Armenian servicemen in numerous manoeuvres of CSTO and NATO.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 29 2007

Turkish Culture Ministry to teach Turkish to the world

The Turkish Ministry of Culture has prepared a bill to establish
foundations for the teaching of the Turkish language and culture all
around the world. The ministry is prepared to build such foundations,
which they have modeled on the British Council.

Launching such a widespread project for the first time, the ministry
decided to name the foundation after the famous Turkish Sufi Yunus
Emre. The foundation will be established under the leadership of the
Ministry of Culture and Tourism and its managerial board will consist
of the Foreign Ministry, the Finance Ministry, Turkish Radio and
Television (TRT), the Turkish Co-operation and Development Agency
(TİKA), the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodities Exchanges
(TOBB), along with representatives from Turkish universities, and
will take its place among the few such foundations in the world like
the Goethe Institute of Germany and the French Cultural Center of
France.
However, the Yunus Emre Foundation, which has been designed to better
teach the Turkish language — which is amongst the 10 most spoken
languages, with such ‘lingua franca’ as Chinese, English, Russian and
Arabic– and to promote the Turkish culture, will have a difference
since its goal will be to teach the Turkish language and culture not
only in developed countries but also in developing countries, unlike
others. The first institutes will be established in European
countries, the United States and the Turkic republics. Then the
organization will soon be launched in other predetermined countries.
The Yunus Emre Foundation is anticipated to be in 150 countries in a
short time.
The foundation will be supported by the general budget. Possessing a
characteristic different from TİKA, the Yunus Emre Foundation
will operate in the field of education and culture. Since TİKA
engages only in economic matters, it will fill the long-standing gap
of the Turkish language and culture teaching across the world. The
foundation will first exhibit and introduce the Turkish culture.

Priority will be language-teaching
The idea for such a foundation was inspired by a report, published by
the United Nations in 2006, which demonstrated that Turkish was a
language spoken by a very large and widespread Turkish population
from the Pacific coast of the Russian Federation to the Central Asia
and to the Caucasus, Anatolia, Thrace, and the Western and Central
Europe. Even though Turkish is among the 10 most spoken languages in
the world, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism found that Turkish was
acknowledged as an official language only in Turkey, Turkish Cyprus
and the city of Prizren in Kosovo, and the disproportionate balance
between the number of countries where it’s spoken and the number of
countries that recognize it as an official language prompted the
ministry to take a major step toward establishing a foundation to
make the Turkish language more prevalent, which will be the first
priority of the foundation over the cultural interchanges.
The research of the United Nations revealed that Turkish has 25
dialects, spoken in 25 different regions. An earlier research by the
UNESCO in 1980 indicated that the total number of people speaking
varieties of Turkish was 200 million. The number has increased to 210
million in a quarter century. A major difference of Turkish from
other world languages is that it is one of the most spoken languages
in the world with its so many varieties. Some of the varieties are as
follows:
The standard language spoken in Turkey, Gagauz Turkish, Azeri
Turkish, Turkmen Turkish, Crimean-Tatar Turkish, Karacay-Malkar
Turkish, Nogay Turkish, Kumluk Turkish, Kazan-Tatar Turkish, Baskurt
Turkish, Kazak Turkish, Uzbek Turkish, Uygur Turkish, Altay Turkish,
Hakas Turkish, Tuva Turkish, Saha (Yakut) Turkish and Cuvash Turkish.

Speaking Turkic languages
73 million in Turkey, nearly 25 million Iranians of Azeri descent,
23,6 million in Uzbekistan, 18 million in the autonomous Turkic
republics in the Russian Federation, Tatarstan, Baskyrdistan,
Cuvahstan, the autonomous Yakut-Saha republic, the autonomous
Dolgan-Mens region, Kabardin Balkar, Tuva, the autonomous
Crimean-Tatar republics, Hakasia, the autonomous Gorno-Altay region,
the autonomous Dagistan republic, the autonomous Karacay region, 17,5
million in East Turkistan (China), 15,9 million in Kazakhstan, 7,6
million in Azerbaijan, 5 million in Kyrgyzstan, 4,6 million in
Turkmenistan, 2,8 million in Tajikistan, 5 million in Afghanistan, 3
million in Iraq, 2,7 million in Germany, 1,5 million in Syria,
850,000 in Bulgaria, 400,000 in Georgia, 350,000 in Serbia and
Kosovo, 300,000 in Crimea, 200,000 in Moldova, 200,000 in Austria,
354,000 in Holland, 150,000 in Australia, 176,000 in France, 135,000
in Greece, 97,000 in Macedonia, 120,000 in England, 112,000 in
Belgium, 50,000 in Israel, 27,000 in the USA, 25,000 in Denmark,
16,000 in Romania, 10,000 in Canada, 7,500 in Switzerland.

Among the most influenced languages
Spoken by 210 million, Turkish is among the languages influenced most
by other languages. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism will give
priority to simplifying Turkish for the language teaching works to be
done in cooperation with the Turkish Language Association. A research
conducted by the association revealed that 14 percent of the words
used in Turkish are of foreign origin (14,816 of 104,481 words).
Turkey was influenced most by Arabic and Persian. The languages
influenced most by Turkish are Armenian and Greek. The number of the
Turkish words used in other languages is as follows:
3159 words in Armenian, 2643 in Greek, 2454 in Bulgarian, 2422 in
Albanian, 1801 in Arabic, 1576 in Russian, 1542 in Romanian, 1500 in
English, 1142 in Hungarian, 228 in Urdu, 213 in Chinese, 110 in
Finnish and 1369 in Persian.

29.01.2007

ERCAN YAVUZ ANKARA