Author: Chavushian

BRANCH OF CSTO INSTITUTE TO OPEN IN ARMENIAN CAPITAL

UzReport.com
November 24, 2009 Tuesday
Uzbekistan

A branch of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
Institute, an autonomous non-commercial organization, will open in
the Armenian capital Yerevan on 24 November, RIA Novosti reported
citing the CSTO.

Armenian National Security Council Secretary Artur Bagdasaryan and
CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha will deliver speeches at
the opening ceremony.

A roundtable on stability and security in the Caucasus will
follow. It will be attended by political experts and CSTO Institute
representatives.

The CSTO Institute, called upon to collect and process information on
the situation in the CSTO member states, was founded in September. The
CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

POLAND’S NATIONAL DEFENSE MINISTER DUE IN ARMENIA

armradio.am
26.11.2009 17:15

The delegation headed by the National Defense Minister of Poland,
Bogdan Klich, will arrive in Armenia on November 27.

Within the framework of the visit the National Defense Minister of
Poland is expected to have meetings with the Defense Minister of
Armenia, Seyran Ohanyan, Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, Secretary
of the National Security Council Arthur Baghdasaryan, Deputy Foreign
Minister Karine Ghazinyan.

The Polish Minister will also visit Tsitsernakaberd to pay tribute
to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

MONITORING TO BE CONDUCTED ON CONTACT LINE BETWEEN AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN ARMED FORCES

APA
Nov 24 2009
Azerbaijan

Baku – APA. Under the mandate of Special Representative of the
OSCE-Chairperson-in-Office, the line of contact between the troops
near Yusifjanli village of Aghdam region of Azerbaijan will be
monitored on November 25. Defense Ministry’s press service told APA
that field assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE
Chairperson-in-Office Peter Key and Vladimir Chountulov will conduct
the monitoring in Azerbaijani side.

Field assistants of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Jiri Aberleh,
Imre Palatinus and Jaslan Nurtazin will conduct the monitoring in
the opposite side of the line of contact recognized as territory of
Azerbaijan on the international level.

VTB BANK ARMENIA ANNOUNCES POSSIBLE SUSPENSION OF PLASTIC CARD SERVICE BECAUSE OF IMPROVEMENT OF HARDWARE-SOFTWARE COMPLEX

ArmInfo
2009-11-24 11:35:00

ArmInfo. VTB Bank Armenia announces possible suspension of its own
processing center on November 24 night from 12:30 AM to 2:30 AM
because of improvement of the bank’s hardware-software complex.

According to the bank’s press service, failure of service of plastic
cards by ATMs and terminals, connected to the bank, is possible during
the period indicated. The bank counts on understanding by card users
and tender apologies for temporary inconveniences.

BORDUZHA SAYS NAGORNO-KARABAKH SETTLEMENT PROCESS INTENSIFIED

Panorama.am
18:16 24/11/2009

The intensification of the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement process
evidences that both the Armenian and the Azerbaijani authorities aim
at reaching a mutually acceptable resolution over a complicated issue,
CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Borduzha told a press conference today.

"The process over the settlement of Karabakh conflict has intensified.

Only this year the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents have had six
meetings," Borduzha said. The talks over Nagorno-Karabakh settlement
are under way, this is what comes of most significance.

The National, UAE
Nov 23 2009

Armenia and Azerbaijan hold talks

Carl Schreck, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: November 23. 2009 12:37AM UAE / November 22. 2009 8:37PM
GMT MOSCOW // The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan met yesterday
for talks over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory, one day after
the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, threatened military action
against the Armenian-controlled region should negotiations fall
through.

Mr Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sarksyan, met at the
French consul general’s residence in Munich, Germany, to discuss the
mountainous territory, which has been the focus of a frozen 15-year
conflict between the two ex-Soviet republics. They agreed to a
ceasefire in 1994 after a six-year war that left 30,000 people dead.

Before the meeting, Mr Aliyev said a failure to reach any resolution
on Karabakh’s status could force his country to respond militarily.
`If that meeting ends without result, then our hopes in negotiations
will be exhausted and then we are left with no other option. We have
the right to liberate our land by military means.’

Analysts were not expecting the meeting to produce major results. A
statement by the Azerbaijan state news agency AzerTac yesterday said
only that the two leaders had met and discussed `the current state and
prospects of the talks to solve’ the Karabakh conflict.

The negotiations come at a time of significant changes in the region.
Turkey and Armenia have agreed to resume diplomatic relations and open
their borders, which have been closed since 1993, when Ankara sided
with Azerbaijan, whose Azeri majority is ethnically Turkic, on
Karabakh.

The normalisation of ties between Armenia and Turkey has increased the
stakes for the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to resolve the Karabakh
issue, as Azerbaijan understands it is losing leverage in the conflict
as relations warm between Ankara and Yerevan, the Armenian capital,
said Svante Cornell, the research director of the Central
Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins
University in the United States.

rticle?AID=/20091123/FOREIGN/711229868/1013

AzerNews Weekly, Azerbaijan
Nov 20 2009

Alleged nuclear reactors delivery to Armenia to be scrutinized

20-11-2009 06:54:51

Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov has said he was
unaware of transporting reactors to Armenia’s nuclear power plant
through Turkey’s territory but Baku would scrutinize reports to that
end.
Further, Azimov said the presence of nuclear reactors in Armenia poses
a threat to the region, noting that Azerbaijan and other regional
states as well as the European Union have been calling on Yerevan to
take action in this respect for many years.
`The EU is demanding a shutdown of the atomic power plant, taking into
account very low safety of the nuclear reactors and high seismic
activity in the region and in Armenia. Russia has devised a plan
jointly with Armenia that envisions re-equipping or repairing the
reactors. The reactors are presently managed and overseen by Russia.
You can look at it this way: supplying reactors producing nuclear
energy that are located in Armenia and controlled by Russia is a
bilateral affair between these two countries. If Russia wants to do
this work, we can view this only positively,’ Azimov said.
He said that whether or not the reactors are delivered to Armenia
through Turkey’s territory is a technical issue, but added: `Given
that the Turkey-Armenia border remains shut, this transit should be
viewed as an exclusive case.’
Turkish Ambassador in Baku, Hulusi Kilic, has termed as false the
reports on reactors’ transfer via his country.
`If Turkey-Armenia border is closed, there can’t be transit either,’ he said.
Armenia and Turkey have been at odds and the border between the two
countries has been closed since 1993.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict for over a decade.*

OFFICE OF MILITARY ATTACHE TO BE ESTABLISHED AT ARMENIAN EMBASSY IN GERMANY IN 2010

NOYAN TAPAN
NOVEMBER 20, 2009
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 20, NOYAN TAPAN. A meeting of the RA Minister of
Defence Seyran Ohanian and the newly-appointed German Ambassador to
Armenia Hans Yochen Schmidt took place on November 17. The sides
stressed that the bilateral cooperation, including in the defence
sphere, is developing with every passing year, covering new and new
fields. In this connection, they expressed a high opinion about the
activities of the Military Attache of Germany to Armenia, Colonel
Paulus. Armenian-German cooperation is deepening in such fields
as military education, medicine, justice, peacekeeping. With the
support of the German side, a German Language Center was set up
and functions at the RA Ministry of Defence. The annual program of
bilateral cooperation includes mutual visits, expert discussions, and
training courses. It is envisaged establishing an Office of Military
Attache at the Armenian embassy in Germany in 2010.

According to the Information and PR Department of the RA Ministry
of Defence, at the conclusion of the meeting Seyran Ohanian handed
two letters to the German ambassador: a congratulatory letter for
the new Defence Minister of Germany Dr. Guttenberg and a letter of
thanks for the former Defence Minister Dr. Jung.

ARMENIAN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SPEAKER RECEIVES MEMBERS OF THE AGO GROUP

ARMENPRESS
NOVEMBER 20, 2009
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS: Armenian National Assembly Speaker
Hovik Abrahamyan received today members of the Council of Europe’s
Ministers’ Committee’s Monitoring Commission (Ago group) headed
by the Romanian permanent representative in the Council of Europe,
Ambassador Stelian Stoyan.

NA public relations department told Armenpress that greeting the
guest, the NA speaker presented members of the group the developments
followed after the 2008 elections and steps undertaken to overcome
the consequences of the March 1-2 tragic events.

During the thorough discussion of the developments of the past one and
a half year, the sides agreed that there is a serious progress in the
sphere. They also noted that for its consolidation it is necessary
to continue the work, encouraging the trust of the people toward
state establishments.

The sides also referred to the issue on normalization of
Armenian-Turkish relations without pre-conditions.

WE’LL SAY IT’S OURS, THE TURKISH THAT IT’S THEIRS

Aysor
Nov 18 2009
Armenia

"We understand that having relations is inescapable, but we will face
obstacles when the Armenian and the Turkish start having relation with
each other as their perception about us, and our perception about us
and them is totally different and there are a lot of distorted facts,
our perceptions totally differ and many facts are created, a lot of
things have become a hostage to politics", – Aharon Adibekyan the
director of the "Sociometer" sociological center thinks.

A. Adibekyan informed that the historical realities, the cultural
heritage and the identification are distorted which will serve
the reason for conflicts between the two nations. As an example the
sociologist informed that in the Azerbaijani sites is said that "even
Iran is an Azerbaijani country and the Azeri get surprised what the
Persians do there", besides whatever is found in Armenia and Iran
are called Azerbaijani heritage.

"The Turkish call themselves premium nation in the Modern Asia, they
think they have 5 thousand years old history, they are originally
from Asia and all the nations now living in the present territory of
Turkey have been their successors", – A. Adibekyan said and added, –
"If we leave for Turkey tomorrow, we see our breeds there, our cuisine,
our songs and dances, architecture and say that all these is ours,
the Turkish will answer that it is theirs as they have been convinced
for many years that it is Turkish."

On this occasion the sociologist mentioned that the real problems
are not in political, economic, diplomatic relations which can be
solved but the humane relations. "How are we going to solve the humane
factor", – asked Aharon Adibekyan summing up his speech.