Author: Diana Dabaghian

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has asked the Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to resign, saying he has lost the support of the ruling coalition, the BBC reports.

But Poroshenko said there would not be a snap election.

Mr Yatsenyuk’s government has been criticised over the slow pace of reform and faces allegations of corruption.

Western governments have expressed concern over the resignation of reform-minded figures from the government.

“The cabinet has lost the coalition’s trust,” the president said in a statement.

“To restore this trust, therapy is not enough. One should resort to surgical means,” he added, saying it was “obvious” that there is demand for a “complete reset of the cabinet”.

The president said a new cabinet could be formed by the existing parliamentary coalition.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk is due to address parliament, where he faces the threat of a vote of no confidence.

Mr Poroshenko’s party will vote to criticise Mr Yatsenyuk’s performance as “unsatisfactory”, its leader Yuriy Lutsenko told parliament.

“The Minsk Group is the only mediation format that has been accepted by the sides and has the full confidence of all OSCE participating States,”  Ambassador Véronique Roger-Lacan, France’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE, said in an . She made the statement on behalf of the three countries co-chairing the Minsk Group, the Russian Federation, United States and France.

“The Minsk Group Co-chairs contribute to stabilizing the security situation by keeping regular contacts with the sides and through close cooperation with the personal representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office who monitors on a daily basis the situation on the ground, – in the context of regular and often deadly ceasefire violations – along the line of contact as well as along the international border between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” she said.

“According to its mandate, which is inter alia “to conduct negotiations with the Parties to obtain conclusion of an agreement on the cessation of the armed conflict”, the Minsk Group Co-chairs aim at promoting, through the Madrid principles, a balanced approach to the settlement of the conflict, based in particular on the conciliation of the principles of self-determination, territorial integrity and non-use of force. It is not the inefficiency of the mediation process conducted by the Co-chairs that is to blame for the serious lack of progress in the negotiations, but the lack of political will of the parties to reach a peaceful settlement,” Véronique Roger-Lacan said.

“The Co-chairs are also working on the endorsement by the parties of confidence building measures, such as the creation of a prevention and investigation mechanism of the ceasefire violations along the line of contact, and dialogue between the communities of Nagorno-Karabakh. Their action also focuses on the humanitarian measure of exchanging data on the missing persons from the conflict, agreed at the Paris summit of 27 October 2014 and implemented by the ICRC,” the French Representative said.

“The Co-Chairs will continue to brief international and regional organizations interested in supporting the Minsk Group process. They will continue their engagement to work closely with the sides in order to reach a peaceful and sustainable settlement of the conflict,” she concluded.

On February 1, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian had a meeting with the Ambassadors of the OSCE member-states accredited in Armenia and Andrey Sorokin, Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan, on the latter’s initiative.

At the meetings the results of the OSCE Ministerial Council held in Belgrade in December, issues concerning the German Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2016, as well as a number of other issues of the OSCE agenda were discussed.

Edward Nalbandian presented the process of peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and outlined the importance of active role of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries. The sides touched upon the results of the meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan held in Bern at the end of last year.

Minister Nalbandian highly commended the activity of the OSCE Office in Yerevan and thanked Andrey Sorokin, Head of the Office, for his productive work.

Photo: AP

 

A series of bomb blasts have rocked the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, with continuing gunfire and reports of further explosions.

At least six people have been killed by the blasts, say police, which hit locations including a shopping centre close to UN offices, the BBC reports.

Police say at least four suspected attackers are dead. It remains unclear who was behind the assault.

President Joko Widodo has called for calm but condemned the “act of terror”.

“We all are grieving for the fallen victims of this incident, but we also condemn the act that has disturbed the security and peace and spread terror among our people,” he said.

By Hannah Lucinda Smith

The caretaker of the ancient Armenian church of Surp Giragos listened helplessly as, on the other side of the barricades, an explosion blew out the windows of his building and echoed through the narrow streets.”There were clashes around the church, but they had stopped in the past few days,” Gaffur Turkay told The Times.

Surp Giragos, which was closed during the Armenian genocide of 1915 and reopened in 2011, is caught in the middle of an urban war, here in the historic city of Diyarbakir, the de facto capital of the Kurdish-majority southeast of Turkey. The security forces are trying to quash an uprising led by fighters linked to the PKK, a Kurdish separatist militia.

Most of Sur, the neighbourhood within the Unesco-listed city walls,has been under lockdown for the past month. Surp Giragos is behind the blockades, as are dozens of mosques, ancient bath houses and coaching inns. Extensive damage has already been wreaked on many of the oldbuildings.

Mr Turkay has been unable to reach the church to check the damage since the curfew began. Today, he and the two dozen others who make up Diyarbakir’s tiny Armenian Christian community will have to begin Orthodox Christmas celebrations in their homes, rather than under the splendour of Surp Giragos’s arches. “People will visit each other,give presents, but we can’t do anything about this situation,” Mr Turkay said.

The Armenians in southeast Turkey are descendants of survivors of the 1915 genocide, in which 1.5 million Christians were massacred and displaced as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. It is a chapter that continues to traumatise and divide the country. Most of the killings were carried out by Kurdish soldiers on the orders of Ottoman generals, although many Armenian children were sheltered by sympathetic Kurdish families, and then raised as Muslims. The Kurdish southeast has made efforts to integrate and support the Armenian revival, but many Turks still deny that the genocide happened.

In recent years, as the grandchildren of those converts have rediscovered their roots, some have chosen to return to Christianity.

Armen Demircian is another who was brought up as a Muslim, and converted to Christianity when he discovered that his father was a genocide survivor. “My grandfather and three uncles were massacred,but a Kurdish family saved my father, who was four years old,” he said. “They hid him in their house, raised him, and treated him like a son. Until a certain age I felt Kurdish, but after I found out, I wanted to live as an Armenian.”

In southeastern Turkey, the Armenians are once again trapped in the middle. “If this war extends and gets worse, it will destroy the Kurds and the Armenians,” Mr Demircian said.
“For now we are stepping back and watching.”

The US, South Korea and Japan have said they will be united in their response to North Korea’s claim to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, the BBC reports.

North Korea said it carried out the test on Wednesday – if confirmed it would be its fourth nuclear test, and its first of the more powerful H-bomb.

The UN Security Council has also agreed to start drawing up new measures against North Korea.

But scepticism remains over whether the North really did conduct such a test.

Experts have said the seismic activity generated by the blast was not large enough for it to have been a full thermonuclear explosion.

Iran has held negotiations with Georgia on sending its gas to the Caucasian nation through Armenia, Managing Director of the National Iranian Gas Exports Company (NIGEC) Alireza Kameli says, reports. 

“Based on negotiations with Georgia, we are supposed to take gas to the Armenian border, for Georgia to receive it at its border with Armenia,” he was quoted as saying by IRNA on Monday.

“For signing a deal, however, the gas exports plan must be economical for Georgia,” Kameli said, without elaboration.

The plan is to transfer 300-500 million cubic feet a day of Iranian gas through a pipeline for use in power generation in Georgia, he added.

Iran is currently exporting gas to Armenia in exchange for electricity. There is a further swap arrangement in place with Azerbaijan.

Kameli stressed that the planned gas exports to Georgia were intended for domestic use and not for Europe.

“The issue of exports to Europe through a pipeline is out of question in our view and our priority is exports in LNG form (to Europe),” he said.

By Assadour Guzelian

October 29, 2015 was a special day for Sotheby’s Auction House. Under the auspices and with the participation of Albert, the Crown Prince of Monaco, an auction was organized on the occasion of the 50^th Death Anniversary of Winston Churchill.

The main organizers of the event were Prince Albert of Monaco, the British Ambassador to Monaco and the former Prime Minister and current Ambassador of Armenia Dr. Armen Sarkissian. The entire proceeds of the auction were allocated to Prince Albert’s charities related to climatic changes.

Items being auctioned were the drinks, cigars and menswear of renowned brands and others objects favored by Churchill.

During the auction the main attention was focused on the statue of Churchill by the well-known sculptor Oscar Nemon and a decades old bottle of “Ararat” Armenian brandy with an interesting background history. Many years ago, this unique bottle of Armenian brandy was sold at an auction by Christy’s for more than GBP 15,000. According to the documents provided the bottle was filled from the same barrels from which for many years Stalin supplied Churchill with “Ararat” Armenian brandy.

The exclusive bottle of brandy was donated to the auction by former Prime Minister and current Ambassador of Armenia Dr. Armen Sarkissian.

Sotheby’s auction house was filled with many high class aristocrats. What happened at the auction next, surpassed everyone’s expectation; The 70 year old “Ararat” was sold for GBP 80,000, which is equal to USD 120,000!

The participants to the auction with amazement and admiration spoke about Armenia and the Armenians. Hopefully the unprecedented success of the Armenian brandy in misty Albion will help to promote the fame of “Ararat” brand.

When and where did Churchill first drink the Armenian brandy?

My wife Vivienne and I had the pleasure of enjoying the friendship of Winston Churchill’s daughter Sara for many years, starting from late 1960s. When for the first time she was invited to dinner, she noticed in our sitting room on the piano, a bottle of “Ararat” Armenian brandy. She looked at the bottle with amazement and said,

“From 1945 until his death, my father used to drink this brandy.”

Then Sara told us when and where Churchill first drank “Ararat” brandy.

During the Yalta Conference In 1945 February, after the dinner Stalin asks Churchill if he wished to have a drink?

“I like a brandy with my cigar”, answers the British Prime Minister.

The host offers Churchill “Ararat”, the best Armenian brandy.

According to Sara, Churchill “falls in love” with “Ararat” Armenian brandy and asks Stalin;

“Where can I purchase few bottles of this brandy?”

Stalin instructs the Soviet ambassador to the U.K. to present Churchill with a case (12 bottles) of “Ararat” every month.

“My father passed away, but we continued receiving every moth a case of ‘Ararat’. Many years later, someone realizes that the Embassy has been sending brandy to a “dead” Churchill for the past ten years! Unfortunately from that day on our source of the Armenian brandy dried up! By the way I used to enjoy ‘Ararat’ as much as my father”, added Sara.

And according to Sara, following dinner, the only thing left on the dining table was an empty bottle of “Ararat” brandy.

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Photo: AFP 2015/ YOUSSEF KARWASHAN

– Mahmut Ghazi Tatar, a captured member of the Islamic State terrorist organization, spoke to Sputnik Turkey, revealing details about being in the ranks of IS and Turkey’s ties with the terror group.

Mahmut Ghazi joined IS after being influenced by a friend who had joined the group earlier. He, together with 27 other Turks, was helped to cross the border into Syria where he joined the ranks of the militants.

“After crossing border we were moved to a training camp 5 km from the border. We received military training and attended religious classes. Before the start of training, each of us was asked whether we want to be martyrs. I refused. This question is asked of all new recruits. Those who agree, within 6 months receive special religious training. Since I refused, my education and training lasted 70 days. We learned by the Turkish books. During the training, a few people from Turkey came to check on us. They did not have beards and they were not members of IS,” Mahmut Tatar told Sputnik Turkiye during an interview.

After receiving their training the 27 members who were all Turkish were sent to the city of Tel Abaid where they lived in houses and where their training continued. Their names were kept secret and they were not allowed to contact their families for a period of six months.

Talking about how he was caught by Kurdish soldiers, Ghazi said that upon receiving warning of the presence of Kurdish soldiers from other IS members he and 12 other group members ran away from Tal Abaid. They were hiding in a nearby village. But the next morning when Ghazi tried to make a run for it he was caught.

“Kurds treat prisoners well, they feed them, give water and even cigarettes. I was kept in this room along with several other people. I did not think that they will treat me so well, I was afraid of torture. I thought we would be killed, but it turned out that the Kurdish troops do not kill captives. I heard that ISIS when being captured by Kurds are either killed at once or are kept alive to make prisoner exchange with the Kurds.”

Talking about what he heard from his commander the captured member revealed that during his training camp in May 2015, one IS commander Abu Talha told them that the group sells oil to Turkey. According to Abu Talha, the money that was raised from sale of oil in Turkey helped IS resolve all financial difficulties.

“The oil tankers that were sent every day to Turkey had crude oil, fuel oil and gasoline. The main source of income for IS is oil trade and oil inventories will last them a long time.”

“Abu Talha also said that the group earns a lot of money in trade with Turkey. He also said that the oil is sold through the mediation of a number of businessmen and merchants, but did not give names. IS also receives many products from Turkey and other Arab countries,” Mahmut Ghazi revealed.

He mentioned that his commanders did not attach particular importance to the US bombings. They believed that it was done as a pretense.

One of the militants asked the commander why IS was not fighting against Israel. Abu Talha said: “First we need to break down a small wall and then destroy the large one.”

According to the captured member most new recruits joined the group from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen, Qatar, Lebanon and Egypt. They crossed the Turkish border, which is very simple to do. The fighters from Europe and America follow the same route.

“The commanders told us that they were going to commit a terrorist act that would exceed the scale of the September 11 attacks on the US,” Mahmut Ghazi concluded.

Turkey’s statements on Nagorno Karabakh are destructive, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich has said.

Ankara declared earlier it would do its utmost to ensure the “return of territories in Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan.”

“The attempts to defend one of the parties to the Karabakh conflict are destructive and cannot have any continuation,” Lukashevich said, speaking to Rossiya-24 TV Channel.