Author: Kalashian Nyrie

ACCORDING TO DPA LEADER, BY CEDING LIBERATED TERRITORIES ARMENIAN SIDE WILL GREATLY ENDANGER KARABAKH PEOPLE

NOYAN TAPAN

Dec 24, 2008
Yerevan

According to Aram G. Sargsian, the Chairman of the Democratic
Party of Armenia (DPA) and In Defence of NKR steering committee,
the negotiations proceeding over the Nagorno Karabakh settlement are
very alarming at present. As he mentioned at the December 24 press
conference, today at the negotiations table they say that at first the
liberated territories should be returned and then Karabakh’s status
should be determined. While, according to A. Sargsian’s observation,
Azerbaijan’s consent on Artsakh’s independence should be received at
first and then an agreement on other issues should be reached.

According to the DPA leader, be ceding the liberated territories
the Armenian side will greatly endanger Karabakh people, as even
guarantees given by the international community cannot reserve
Azerbaijan’s appetite.

According to A. Sargsian, that country getting back the liberated
lands without fail will strive for getting Karabakh as well.

THE VICE SPOKESMAN DOESN’T CONFIRM

Hayots Ashkharh Daily
20 Dec 2008
Armenia

The Vice Spokesman for the US State Secretariat Robert Wood announced
that he welcomes the signing of the Maindorf declaration.

He specially emphasized that attaching great importance to the
fundamental principles of the international law the USA is ready to
support any stance over which the parties will reach an agreement.

Based on the controversial announcements made by Minsk Group American
Co-Chairman Mathew Braze the Azerbaijani party, states recently
that allegedly the USA considers that the issue must be settled in
the framework of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. Whereas the
Vice Spokesman for the State Secretariat didn’t confirm the before
mentioned stance.

Le Monde, France
20 décembre 2008 samedi

Editorial;
Réveil des consciences

Il faut du courage pour " demander pardon " à ses " frères et soeurs
arméniens " pour le génocide de 1915 en Turquie. C’est ce que viennent
de faire quatre intellectuels turcs de premier plan, à l’origine d’une
pétition sur Internet. Habituellement, le négationnisme de l’Etat turc
s’oppose à quiconque prétend s’écarter d’une version officielle qui
nie toute tuerie intentionnelle et organisée. Le sort de plus d’un
million d’Arméniens, massacrés de 1915 à 1916 dans ce qui a été le
premier génocide du XXe siècle, demeure un sujet tabou en Turquie.

L’amnésie collective est pratiquée depuis la création de la
République, en 1923 : " Un lavage de cerveau ", dit Baskin Oran, un
des instigateurs de cette pétition, pour qui " une telle ignorance ne
peut venir que de l’éducation ". Mais les fantômes reviennent. La
Turquie ne peut plus, aujourd’hui, échapper à son introspection, car
la part arménienne de son identité, niée pendant quatre-vingt-dix ans,
réapparaît au grand jour. Le contexte politique y est plus favorable.

Depuis que le pays est candidat à l’Union européenne, la parole s’est
libérée. Les projets artistiques, les romans et les films explorant
cette zone d’ombre, fleurissent. Une conférence universitaire, en
2005, à Istanbul, a ouvert la voie à la reconnaissance du martyre subi
par les Arméniens sous l’Empire ottoman. Les initiatives
individuelles, comme cette pétition, font petit à petit sauter des
verrous psychologiques.

Le président Abdullah Gül, qui s’est rendu en Arménie en septembre,
jette un oeil bienveillant sur ces débats. Ils montrent, selon lui,
que la démocratie turque arrive à maturité. Mais une députée kémaliste
a conseillé aux journalistes de s’intéresser au passé de la mère du
président, implicitement soupçonné d’avoir des racines arméniennes. En
Turquie, le mot " Arménien " reste une insulte, régulièrement proférée
dans les stades, dans les cours de récréation et dans les couloirs du
Parlement. En demandant pardon à titre individuel, des milliers de
Turcs s’estiment aujourd’hui responsables d’avoir laissé s’installer
ce silence lourd de sens. En cela, l’assassinat du journaliste
d’origine arménienne Hrant Dink, en janvier 2007, a joué le rôle
d’accélérateur de l’histoire. Ce n’est pas un hasard si les quatre
intellectuels repentants étaient des proches d’Hrant Dink.

TURKISH PRESIDENCY SAYS ARMENIAN CAMPAIGN A SIGN OF FREE ATMOSPHERE

Dec 18 2008
Turkey

A group of people issued an apology on the internet for the events
of 1915 boosting a nationwide discussion.

The Presidential Press Center has said that President Abdullah Gul
considered recent discussions in the Turkish public opinion and
academic circles over the events in 1915 a sign of existence of a
democratic discussion atmosphere in Turkey which was more civilized and
freer than many other countries and of Turkish people’s reconciliation
with their history and their self-confidence.

The Presidential Press Center said in a statement on Thursday that
Gul had always clearly expressed Turkey’s ideas and proposals about
the events and Turkish-Armenian relations on numerous occasions and
in many international platforms.

"During Gul’s term in office as the foreign minister and deputy
prime minister, Turkey proposed Armenia to establish a committee of
historians to examine Turkish and Armenian archives. Gul advocated
the proposal on the international level," it said.

The center also expressed President Gul’s profound regret that the
issue was distorted for some political purposes although his views
were well-known. Gul was criticized by the opposition parties.

A group of people issued an apology on the internet for the events
of 1915 boosting a nationwide discussion.

Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that he did not
accept or support the campaign recently launched by a group of Turkish
intellectuals and academicians aiming to apologize to Armenians for
the incidents of 1915.

"They might have committed such a crime themselves, as they
are apologizing now. Republic of Turkey does not have such a
concern. One can apologize if there is a crime necessitating such
an apology. Neither my country, nor my nation has such concerns,"
Erdogan said, replying to questions following his meeting with
Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov in Istanbul.

Erdogan said that it was unacceptable to support such a campaign just
because it was launched by intellectuals.

Armenia and Turkey do not have diplomatic relations and their shared
border has been closed since 1993 when Turkey protested Armenia’s
occupation of the Upper Karabakh.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed during the waning
years of the Ottoman state, but strongly denies Armenian claims it
was genocide, saying that Armenians also killed Muslim Turks.

The apology describes the events as a great catastrophe.

President Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish leader to visit
Armenia in September as Turkey has sought to improve ties. Several
meetings between Turkish and Armenian officials have followed and
the two countries have expressed hopes of restoring full diplomatic
relations soon.

ARMENIAN EX-FOREIGN MINISTER FACES TRIAL OVER UNREST
Mariam Harutunian

Agence France Presse
December 17, 2008 Wednesday

Seven top opposition supporters, including an Armenian ex-foreign
minister, will go on trial on Friday on charges of seeking to overthrow
the government in unrest this year that left 10 dead.

Prosecutors allege that former foreign minister Alexander Arzumanian,
three members of parliament and two other government critics were
seeking to "usurp state power" when they organised mass protests
in February.

Thousands of supporters of former Armenian president Levon
Ter-Petrosian rallied for 11 days to denounce President Serzh
Sarkisian’s victory in elections, before street battles broke out
with riot police.

Two police officers and eight civilians were killed in the clashes
and dozens more were injured, many from gunshot wounds. Ter-Petrossian
had finished second in the vote.

Critics allege that the prosecution is politically motivated and aimed
at stamping out opposition to Sarkisian in the ex-Soviet republic.

"Justice is not being served, we don’t have an independent
judiciary. This is a show trial," said Arzumanian’s American wife
Melissa Brown, who met the former diplomat while he was an ambassador
in Washington.

Arzumanian, Armenia’s foreign minister from 1996 to 1998, was
Ter-Petrosian’s election campaign manager.

The chief investigator in the case, Vahan Harutunian, said the evidence
against the accused was extensive and that prosecutors had interviewed
more than 500 witnesses.

"There is ample evidence to support the case, otherwise it would not
have been sent to court," he said.

"Even if they are politicians, they committed a crime, there is
evidence of that and they are legally responsible. Everyone is equal
before the law."

But lawyer Hovik Arsenian, who represents Arzumanian and two other
defendants, said the evidence against his clients was weak and that
he had no hope of getting an objective hearing.

"This is an imitation of a court case," he said.

"All of the so-called evidence in this case in fact proves the opposite
— the innocence of my clients…. It is obvious that this case has
nothing to do with criminal justice."

The trial will be closely watched abroad as a sign of whether Armenia
is meeting its democratic commitments.

During a visit to Yerevan last month, the Council of Europe’s
Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg raised concerns about
"seemingly artificial or politically motivated charges" against
opposition supporters, Armenian news agencies reported.

The Strasbourg-based Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
is due in January to discuss suspending the voting rights of its
Armenian members because of concerns over democracy in the country.

The defendants each face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

More than 140 people were arrested following the violence and 52 have
already been tried and received prison sentences of varying lengths.

Armenia — a mountainous country of about three million people
wedged between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Turkey — has seen
repeated political violence and post-election protests since gaining
independence with the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

ARKADY TER-TADEVOSYAN: AZERBAIJAN NEEDS 200,000 SERVICEMEN TO START WAR

Azg
Dec 17 2008
Armenia

According to the Armenian National Statistical Service, the birth rate
in 1990-1992 stood at around 70,000. In 1995 it was 48,000. The annual
birth rate was 37,000 in 2006, and it is growing at a rate of 2,000
each year. According to the Armenian military commissar, about 40,000
boys were born in 1990. Up to 70 per cent of conscription resources
are drafted for the mandatory military service every year. "The other
30 per cent are students, those with health problems and others,"
Armenia’s military commissar Kamo Kochunts says. The Defence Ministry
has calculated that the number of conscripts would be 11,000 in
2016. "We need to maintain today’s number of our army," Kochunts says.

"Fifty thousand troops are serving in the Armenian army today, another
20,000 are serving in the defence army of the Nagornyy Karabakh
republic. The Azerbaijani army has 125,000 servicemen. Azerbaijan
has calculated that they need up to 200,000 troops to start a
war. They can bring their army to 140,000 in the coming years,"
Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan, a commander in the Artsakh [Karabakh] war, says.

To prevent the army’s combat capacity downfall due to demographic
reasons, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Education and
Science have drafted amendments to three laws – on military service,
on education and on higher education and post-graduate studies. Sedrak
Sedrakyan, head of the Defence Ministry’s legal department, says:
"According to the amendments, all boys, regardless of whether they
are students or not, will have to serve in the Army when reaching
the age of 18."

"The positive effect of these amendments would be short-term. Science
would suffer. The development of sciences requires an uninterrupted
process. We would have a less educated society because not every
young man continues education after being discharged from the army,"
Heritage party faction member Vardan Khachatryan says.

TURKISH ARMY: APOLOGY CAMPAIGN TO ARMENIA INAPPROPRIATE

armradio.am
19.12.2008 15:48

The Turkish army said Friday it does not find appropriate the recent
internet campaign launched to issue a public apology to Armenians,
Hurriyet Daily reported.

"We don’t think this is right. It is wrong and will create harmful
consequences," Brigadier General Metin Gurak told at a briefing.

Around 200 Turkish academics, writers and journalists launched
a website issuing an apology to the Armenians regarding the 1915
incidents and calling for people to sign on in support. The petition
states: "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to
and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians
were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share,
I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and
sisters. I apologize to them."

The efforts of the intellectuals drew fierce reaction in Turkey.

On Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said he neither
accepts nor supports the campaign. He added the campaign offers no
other benefit than "stirring up trouble, disturbing our peace and
undoing the steps which have been taken".

Turkey’s opposition parties, Republican People’s Party (CHP) and
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), have also harshly criticized the
campaign.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Tuesday everyone can express their
opinions freely. " The president’s view is that the fact that the
issue is discussed freely in academic and public circles is proof of
the presence of democratic discussion in Turkey," Thursday’s statement
from Gul’s office said.

FENER PATRIARCHATE IS ‘TROJAN HORSE,’ ERENEROL CLAIMS

Today’s Zaman
Dec 19 2008
Turkey

The spokesperson for a group calling itself the Turkish Orthodox
Patriarchate testified yesterday in the trial against Ergenekon, a
clandestine criminal network charged with plotting to overthrow the
government, and claimed that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate based
in Fener is a Trojan horse silently waiting to attack Turkey.

In her defense testimony at the Ä°stanbul 13th High Criminal Court
yesterday in the 28th hearing of the trial, which started in late
October in the Ä°stanbul township of Silivri, Sevgi Erenerol gave
an account of her organization’s history and progress over time. She
said "the Orthodox" at some point chose Trabzon for a meeting place,
claiming that businessman Rahmi Koc and Greek Orthodox Patriarch
Bartholomew also had plans to attend the meeting. However, the two
were not allowed to get out of their helicopters by local nationalists,
she maintained. She claimed that this had caused problems in Trabzon,
saying this incident was the reason behind some of the scandalous
murders in the county over the past few years, including the killing
of an Italian priest in Trabzon and the murder of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in Ä°stanbul, perpetrated by an ultranationalist
youth from Trabzon Also in her defense statement Erenerol criticized
a recent campaign by Turkish intellectuals and academics to apologize
to Armenians for the pain caused by their forced deportation from
Turkish lands in 1915. She also claimed that those who were defending
the country against the attempted destruction of Turkey by Fener
Greek Patriarch Bartholomew were put in jail as terrorists under the
Ergenekon trial.

Erenerol thought to be high-level administrator

The prosecution accuses Erenerol of being one of the top administrators
of the Ergenekon terrorist organization. She was arrested on Jan. 26
on charges of founding and being the leader of an armed organization,
inciting people to armed revolt against the government and illegally
recording private information.

The indictment claims that the church where Erenerol is the
spokesperson is a secret meeting place for Ergenekon.

However, in yesterday’s hearing she denied all charges directed
against her, saying she was not a member of the Ergenekon terrorist
organization and that she had no knowledge of such an organization. She
said all nationalists in the country had been turned into targets
after the armed attack on the Council of Sate in 2006, after which
a retired captain was arrested.

Relation to other Ergenekon suspects

She admitted that she knew Ergenekon suspects Oktay Yıldırım and
Muzaffer Tekin but added that she wasn’t close to them. She said she
really respected Tekin, adding that she was close to his wife. She
told the court that she had also met Mehmet Zekeriya Ozturk during a
program on the National Channel television station. She also said she
knew suspect Ergun Poyraz from the funeral of Necip Hablemitoglu,
a secularist academic killed in an unsolved murder in 2002. "He
is a gift to me from Necip. He stays at our house when he comes to
Ä°stanbul," she said. Ergenekon is also suspected of orchestrating
the Hablemitoglu murder.

–Boundary_(ID_tK79c2EAbmZidB7fTJAWMA)–

COURT SITTING ON "CASE OF THE SEVEN" POSTPONED UNTIL DECEMBER 23

Noyan Tapan

Dec 19, 2008

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 19, NOYAN TAPAN. At the court sitting on the
"case of the seven" resumed at 17:00 judge Mnatsakan Martirosian
for the second time rejected defence party’s petition on judge’s
challenge. However, the lawyers submitted the same petition for the
third time. Prosecutor Koryun Piloyan was going to oppose to lawyers’
petition, and the people gathered in the hall made a noise. The court
sitting was postponed until December 23.

It should be mentioned that RA NA deputies Myasnik Malkhasian, Hakob
Hakobian, Sasun Mikayelian, former RA Foreign Minister Alexander
Arzumanian, writer Shant Haroutiunian, as well as Suren Sirunian and
Grigor Voskerchian are accused of organizing mass disorders on March 1.

INTRACOM WINS ARMENIAN NETWORK CONTRACT

Cellular-News
Dec 16 2008
UK

Intracom Telecom, a part of Sitronics has signed a US$24 million
contract with VivaCell-MTS (K-Telecom), Armenia’s leading mobile
operator for the expansion of its GSM network. Under the terms
of the contract, Intracom Telecom will provide Infrastructure
works, Installation and Integration services, in cooperation with
Alcatel-Lucent who will be the main equipment vendor.

This project aims at enabling VivaCell-MTS (K-Telecom) to expand the
access capacity of its GSM/GPRS network and achieve its business goals
by offering the most advanced high-quality services to the Armenian
end-users. The project is estimated to be completed by the end of
the 1st Quarter of 2009.

Mr. Alexandros Manos, Managing Director of Intracom Telecom, commented:
"This new project is another reward for our over-a-decade commitment
to deliver state of the art solutions and professional services
in Armenia. We are pleased to further enhance our long established
cooperation with VivaCell-MTS (K-Telecom) and are confident that we
will successfully meet the network development requirements of the
Operator that today serves 74% of the country’s mobile subscribers."

"Our previous successful cooperation with Intracom Armenia played
a key role during our partner selection process for this project,"
stated Mr. Ralph Yirikian, VivaCell-MTS General Manager and continued,
"It is important for us to cooperate with a local based company which
provides integrated and cost-effective solutions. VivaCell-MTS strives
at all times to join hands with the world’s top notch suppliers to
be able to provide the best services to the Armenian Society."