Mike Maghakian – Page 57 – Armenian Directory & News

Azerbaijani Press: Malicious intentions of Azerbaijan’s ill-wishers will fail

December 10, 2017December 10, 2017 Mike Maghakian

Xalq Qazeti, Azerbaijan

Dec 7 2017

Malicious intentions of Azerbaijan's ill-wishers will fail

by Ittifaq Mirzabayli

[Armenian News note: the below is translated from Azeri]

While the political influence and the economic rating of the young and independent Azerbaijani state grew internationally, the military power increases as well as our diplomatic positions strengthen; the pain and suffering of those who ignore the country's achievements also multiply.

Even in bed at night, our evil-doers, who are after ways of disrupting Azerbaijan's development, seek and find their associates in Armenia, among pro-Armenian politicians around the world and among the opposition forces in our country. Nevertheless, their most influential supporters in the search for the execution of these sanctimonious options are the authors of dual policies with hypocritical politicians in the world.

In particular, the hand of our ill-wishers, backed by these circles, has become so long that on 5 December the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe succeeded in making the European Court of Human Rights to take a decision that might be regarded as interference in the domestic affairs of Azerbaijan.

Thus, this organization has launched infringement proceedings against Azerbaijan due to the latter's refusal to ensure the unconditional release of ReAL movement leader [and one of Azerbaijan's leading opposition figures] Ilqar Mammadov.

ReAL – Europe's project

Before commenting on this issue, we should recall that Ilqar Mammadov, whom they have eagerly supported, has been a member of the executive board of the Soros Foundation since 2006. The activities of this foundation have been rightly banned in many European countries. They have made it clear that the Soros Foundation is engaged in devastation, confrontation, chaos and anarchy in different countries. On the contrary, although banned in Europe, they are demanding the release of the foundation's [Azerbaijani] representative, who has been arrested for a specific criminal offence in Azerbaijan. This is not only absurd but is also ridiculous.

Ilqar Mammadov, who was a deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani Milli Istiqlal Party at some point in time, could not find a place for himself within the party for some of his mysterious actions, but claimed to teach a lesson to all the country. Obviously, his foreign bosses gave him such a task.

If this were not the case, what happened then that the man who could not find a common language with members of the Azerbaijan Milli Istiqlal Party, who constitute one thousandth of the population of the country, began to give instructions and teach the whole nation? Those who have established the Republican Alternative Movement (ReAL), for sure, gave specific instructions to Ilqar Mammadov. Otherwise, all the anti-Azerbaijani forces worldwide, especially in Europe, would not have cherished the ReAL movement.

I remember well a joint press conference held on 21 June 2013 in Brussels between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. The first question put to the Azerbaijani president was about Ilqar Mammadov, who had been arrested for a specific offence. Moreover, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Rikard Jozwiak tried to portray Ilqar Mammadov as a political opponent of the president.

However, the person called Ilqar Mammadov was a man, who displayed the level of upbringing unlike dozens of the opposition officials portrayed as opponents of the Azerbaijani government for over the last 20 years. He is neither a match for the president, nor for any of the men in the National Council, who are reprimanded on a daily basis by our society. Nevertheless… [ellipsis as published] if the reactionary forces want such a person arrested for a specific offence it may be granted a more pompous name.

No political prisoners in Azerbaijan

We should remember that our government officials explicitly expose these malicious plans both at home and internationally, telling our ill-wishers that there is no-one described as a political prisoner in Azerbaijan.

The views expressed by the president of Azerbaijan in response to the question asked in Brussels were the most consistent of such statements: "None of my political opponents are in jail. This is completely false information. If you carefully read the comments made by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in January, which refused to accept the report on political prisoners in Azerbaijan, you understand that this topic has been closed. No-one has been arrested on political grounds in Azerbaijan. The right to freedom of assembly is completely guaranteed, and the same situation applies to the media freedom. We have free internet. The number of internet users in Azerbaijan is more than 70 per cent [of the population], there is no censorship and all the political parties operate freely and openly. Azerbaijan has been a member of the Council of Europe for more than 10 years. As Mr President [Barroso] said, next year we will chair this important organization [the Council of Europe]. We fully meet all our commitments to democratic development, human rights and freedoms. Thus, your assessment voiced in your question is either based on false information, or negative opinion, or the artificially created impression about Azerbaijan."

That is to say, the Azerbaijan president, standing side by side with the European Commission president, once again made the international community to understand that we know that libels and slanders about Azerbaijan globally have been fabricated by our ill-wishers. As for the introduction to the international community of the man called Ilqar Mammadov as an opponent of the president, or more specifically trying to sell him as such, we should say that this is an absolutely futile attempt.

Ill-wishers will lose

As we mentioned above, up to now none of the representatives of the opposition camp shined for bravery by comparing the Azerbaijani parliament to a zoo.

Perhaps they would want to make such a mistake. However, their upbringing did not let them to do so as everyone in the parliament – be they from the ruling or the opposition parties, independent or with party affiliation – they are all sons and daughters of the Azerbaijani people and citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Even the Armenian press, where the [Armenian] parliament came under shooting, no-one there dared to compare parliamentarians to wild animals or a beast. Comparing Azerbaijani intelligentsia representatives, politicians or women to a beast, a wild animal and a ragtag could only be done by someone like Ilqar Mammadov who hates his own people.

Let's turn to the fact to justify our thoughts. On 2 November 2012, the online version of [opposition] Azadliq newspaper carried Ilqar Mammadov's very valuable article, peculiar of him: "I am insulting the Azerbaijani parliament with this article, and I am right as the Azerbaijani parliament is a zoo where the vast majority of its members are swindlers. In the middle ages, each king had a zoo in their palaces; this is also of that kind. This zoo, which pretends to be the nation's mouthpiece, should be arrested as a result of revolutionary changes in Azerbaijan. The demands to dissolve it are meaningless – what is the need to replace one zoo with another one. A zoo is a zoo, that is."

And this is his upbringing. I wonder, whose moral is compatible to liken the Milli Maclis [parliament], made up of well-known intelligentsia representatives, female MPs, to a zoo, and the deputies to a beast? Now, political intriguers, unable to control themselves, are trying to call him a "political prisoner". Of course, his foreign sponsors are also familiar with his level of upbringing, nevertheless, they support him.

The reason for is that they want very much to discredit Azerbaijan's comprehensive development. In order to achieve that desire, it is necessary to play with a card called Ilqar Mammadov.

Let them play. The people of Azerbaijan have thwarted and exposed many games of those who want to inflict problems on the people in the last 25-26 years. It is as clear as daylight that our ill-wishers will also lose the game played with a card called Ilqar Mammadov.

Music: Verdi’s Requiem to commemorate Genocide victims

December 8, 2017December 8, 2017 Mike Maghakian

Panorama, Armenia

Dec 7 2017

Culture 13:39 07/12/2017 Armenia

The Armenian State Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ministry of Culture are offering a performance of Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem by a unique group of musicians.

The concert, dedicated to the International Day of Commemoration of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and to the memory of the Spitak earthquake victims, is scheduled at Aram Khachaturian Concert Hall at 7:00pm 9 December, the Philharmonic Orchestra said.

The event has brought together such brilliant musicians as soloists Erika Grimaldi, soprano (Italy), Olesya Petrova, mezzo soprano (Russia), Georgy Vasiliev, tenor (Russia) and Roberto Scandiuzzi, bass (Italy).

The Armenian National Academic Choir (artistic director and principal Conductor Hovhannes Tchekidjian) will join the performance.

The concert will be conducted by Eduard Topchjan.

Chess: London Chess Classic: Aronian, all others draw first round

December 3, 2017December 3, 2017 Mike Maghakian

Panorama, Armenia

Dec 2 2017

London Chess Classic, the concluding leg of the 2017 Grand Chess Tour, kicked off in London on Friday.

All the games of the first round – Ian Nepomniachtchi-Levon Aronian, Wesley So-Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Michael Adams-Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura-Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen-Fabiano Caruana – ended in draw.

According to the National Olympic Committee, Armenian GM Levon Aronian will face Fabiano Caruana on the second round scheduled for Saturday.

London Chess Classic 2017 is held in the 10-player round robin format featuring a prize fund of $300,000.

Azerbaijani press: Azerbaijani Community of Nagorno-Karabakh Region sends appeal to CNN TV presenter

November 4, 2017November 4, 2017 Mike Maghakian

3 November 2017 17:33 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.3

By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:

The Public Union of the Azerbaijani Community of Nagorno-Karabakh Region of Azerbaijan has sent an appeal to CNN TV presenter Anthony Bourdain and CNN.

The host of the show on CNN, American chef Anthony Bourdain has been added to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's list of undesirable persons for violation of territorial integrity and sovereignty, as well as laws of Azerbaijan.

Authors of the appeal said that war crimes, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate violence against civilians have been an integral part of the ongoing aggression of Armenia against the Republic of Azerbaijan.

“During the active phase of the war in 1991-1994, the attack on the town of Khojaly was especially brutal and tragic. Before the conflict, we, survivors of this massacre, and other 7,000 people lived peacefully in Khojaly in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. From October 1991, the town was entirely surrounded by the armed forces of Armenia. In the early hours of February 26, 1992, following massive artillery bombardment of Khojaly, the assault was launched from various directions. As a result, the Armenian armed forces, with the help of the motorized infantry regiment No. 366 of the former Soviet Army still stationed in the area, seized Khojaly. Invaders destroyed Khojaly with special brutality and completely exterminated its civilian population. Atrocities by Armenian troops included scalping, beheading, bayoneting of pregnant women and mutilation of bodies. Even children were not spared. As a result, 613 civilians were killed, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly. Another 1,000 people were wounded and 1,275 taken hostage. To this day, 150 people from Khojaly remain missing. The intentional slaughter of the civilians in Khojaly town was directed at their mass extermination based on racial discrimination,” reads the appeal.

Further, the authors note: “In a cynical admission of culpability, Armenia’s then-Defense Minister and current President, Serzh Sargsyan, was quoted by the British journalist Thomas de Waal, as saying, “[b]efore Khojali, the Azerbaijanis thought that … the Armenians were people who could not raise their hand against the civilian population. We were able to break that [stereotype]” (Thomas de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War (New York and London, New York University Press, 2003), p. 172)).”

Indeed, Khojaly was chosen as a stage for further occupation and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijani territories, said the appeal.

The authors pointed out that as a result of war unleashed by Armenia against Azerbaijan, some 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory is currently occupied.

“In violation of international humanitarian law, Armenia carried out ethnic cleansing policy against almost one million Azerbaijani civilians in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and in Armenia itself. It left Azerbaijan with one of the largest internally displaced population per capita in the world. We do respect your professionalism and your programs about international cuisine. In the times of peace, such culinary exchanges bring peoples together. But in the context of ongoing war and brutality, such a cultural program sends an unintended message of endorsing the ethnic cleansing and annexation by force to victims of war crimes, like ourselves, who have lost their loved ones and native homes. Please also understand that we are even deprived from the opportunity to visit graveyards of our parents and loved ones left in the occupied territories. For over 25 years, we live with the hope of returning to our native lands, rebuilding our homes and making traditional Azerbaijani shila pilaf for our children, like the dish you have been served in destroyed and depopulated Azerbaijani town of Shusha. Admittedly, your visit to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan on a military helicopter and preparations to make culinary show right next to Khojaly, where crime against humanity committed, have seriously disappointed us and added insult to our injuries. We would like to believe that you have been misled about the realities on the ground and your visit to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan was not intentional. After all, it is hard to imagine you enjoying German food at the site of a Nazi concentration camp or enjoying a lunch with Bosnian Serb militants while they were in control of the mass murder site in Srebrenica,” reads the appeal.

The authors noted that Armenia’s illegal, violent and protracted occupation of Azerbaijani land, including Khojaly, harmed Armenia’s own people, its economy and its future.

“This is because our Armenian neighbors, with whom we lived in peace for centuries and hope to build a peaceful region together, need to understand that one cannot build happiness on the tragedy of others. Endorsing and thus prolonging the occupation and this war, helps nobody other than those who profit from this tragedy. Instead, we need to help the two nations find ways to come to peace and promote the international peace-making efforts. We urge to take into account sensitive nature of the situation and the suffering so many of us have lived through. We also appeal to you to reconsider your decision to include the segment from the occupied and ethnically cleansed territories of Azerbaijan in your show,” reads the appeal.

Earlier, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, told BuzzFeed that making a culinary show from seized lands is utter disrespect to one million Azerbaijani refugees and [internally displaced peoples who were] forcefully displaced.

“We do regret that he has made himself a propaganda tool to justify and disguise occupation of Azerbaijan’s lands by Armenia,” he added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

Azerbaijani press: Azerbaijani MP hails BTK railway’s launch

November 2, 2017November 2, 2017 Mike Maghakian

16:30 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 31

By Samir Ali – Trend:

By commissioning the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, Azerbaijan has added another bright page to the country’s glorious history, the Azerbaijani MP Elman Nasirov told Trend Oct. 31.

He noted that the railway’s commissioning attracted the attention of the entire world community. He stressed that the opening of the BTK railway will have big impact on cargo transportation between Europe and Asia.

“This is a very important event,” Nasirov said. “The BTK railway project will further strengthen positions of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey in the international arena, and all the three countries will have a greater financial benefit from it. The opening of the BTK railway will also increase Azerbaijan’s export opportunities.”

“The opening of the BTK railway once again showed the world that all projects initiated by Azerbaijan are implemented,” he noted. “The BTK project is another historic step of Azerbaijan. The project’s implementation will lead to further strengthening of Azerbaijan’s cooperation with the countries located along the BTK railway.”

The MP added that this project is a step, which serves cooperation in the region.

“The implementation of this project upset Armenia,” said Nasirov. “The Armenian media recognize that as a result of the policy of the country’s President Serzh Sargsyan, Armenia’s economy has fallen into decay, the country is in a blockade and the poverty level of Armenia’s population is growing rapidly.”

The official opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was held in Baku Oct.30. The BTK railway was constructed on the basis a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The railway’s peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.

Armenia’s 2018 state budget aims at ensuring long-term economic growth, says finance minister

October 31, 2017October 31, 2017 Mike Maghakian

| 12:21 | October 30 2017

Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun: A Spacewoman Came Travelling

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 Mike Maghakian

Sunday Business Post

Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun: A Spacewoman Came Travelling

by Leanna Byrne

HIGHLIGHT: Space conductor, scientist, experience-maker and more: Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun is so compelling they’ve created both a Barbie doll and a Lego figure in her image. Leanna Byrne spoke to her ahead of her Dublin visit, where she’ll be sharing her intergalactic ideas at The Future conference. Feeling inadequate? Good. Then let’s begin

Successful people will always get asked how they got to where they are. But in Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun’s case, the question is not only about the how, but the why.

Why, in 2012, did she assemble the International Space Orchestra (ISO), the world’s first orchestra of space scientists and astronauts from Nasa?

Why did she bring together designers, thinkers and entrepreneurs to launch the University of the Underground, a free MA programme for experiential design?

Why did she decide to produce a futuristic feature-length movie on the chain of command in place in the event of an asteroid hitting the Earth?

For Ben Hayoun, there is just one answer: to change the world.

“There is a need for decision-making creatives to be at the top level. I want to know that, in the next five years, I will have played a part in making the next president a creative, or someone in design or graphic art. I want to support that. Too often as creatives we think that our place in the world is not something we should play a part in. If we were playing a part, things would be a bit different,” she says.

Named by the commercial arts and design magazine Creative Review as one of the top 50 creative leaders driving change in the world at large in June, Ben Hayoun has a CV as impressive as it is diverse.

In 2014, Wired magazine awarded her with an Innovation Fellowship for her work and its ‘significant impact on the world’. The following year, she was nominated for a Women of the Year Achievement Award. She is designer of experiences at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, head of experiences at WeTransfer, a member of the Space Outreach and Education Committee at the International Astronautical Federation, a United Nations Adviser to the UN Virtual Reality labs, an advisory board member at the American Institute for Graphic Arts in Los Angeles and a visiting professor at the Royal College of Arts and the Architectural Association. And there’s lots more, certainly more than the space here will allow. She is – for the record – 32 years of age.

Too eclectic to be nailed down to one discipline, Ben Hayoun likes to strafe between film, design, music, semiotics, politics, digital and scientific practices.Somewhat ironically, the pressure to fit into a particular category has made her who she is today.

A space Barbie doll named after herself

Born in Valence in south-eastern France, Ben Hayoun was creative from a very young age. At secondary school, however, while preparing for her baccalauréat, she was compelled to choose between her love for creativity and her love for science.

“I chose science,” she tells me, “but I became friends with the tutors in fine art and started taking their classes. That’s where I started to see the possibilities of what the institution offered and, to some extent, that there was no limit.”

Graduating with a scientific Bac, Ben Hayoun toyed with the idea of becoming a doctor. She applied to study medicine, but also tried her hand at being accepted to one of four of Paris’s finest art schools.

On first attempt, she failed to make the cut. “These four schools were extremely competitive because there was just a few places. I applied for it straight after my Bac, but I didn’t get in. I thought: ‘That’s not right. This isn’t possible, I need to go in.’ So the year after, I applied, and I eventually got it,” she says.

Ben Hayoun trained in painting and later textile design at Olivier de Serres National College of Art and Design in Paris, before graduating from Design Interactions (MA) at the Royal College of Art. More recently, she was awarded a PhD in Human Geography and Political Philosophy from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Despite having a family history in the textiles industry, Ben Hayoun soon realised that she had not inherited her family’s skill. “My family came from Armenia, and they started in textiles like a lot of immigrants in the south of France. But I was crap at it. I was really bad,” she says.

Instead, she ended up doing a project on ceramics and, aged 19, spent time making kimonos in Japan. It took four years of picking fruit in the south of France to save up for the trip, she recalls.

In Japan, Ben Hayoun secured an internship with three brothers who were creating fashion designer Issey Miyake’s A-POC (A Piece of Cloth) collection, but only after she was asked to make chimneys out of cement for three months to prove her worth.

Indeed, she says that she has always been drawn to the unattainable.

“I’ve always wondered why I was so fascinated by space. Now I know that I am intrigued by places that are not welcome or that are not really open and are difficult to access. The more difficult it is to access, the more interesting it is to me,” she says.

“It took seven years for me to make it into Nasa. But by 2012, I made my way in there and eventually got into developing this project, which was the international space orchestra.”

Eventually, Ben Hayoun left Japan to enrol in the British Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions course.

Listening to a talk by the organisers of the course, one comment stuck: “People are not consumers or users, but they are complex human beings.”

“That just really hit me,” says Ben Hayoun.

By 2009, she had finished the course and founded Nelly Ben Hayoun Studio to focus on experience design.

Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun with musician Beck

Four years later, her recordings by the International Space Orchestra, entitled Ground Control: An Opera in Space, were released from the International Space Station. That same year, the International Space Orchestra feature film had its world premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

In 2015, Ben Hayoun released her feature film Disaster Playground, a film based on an investigation of emergency procedures for disasters such as Earth-bound rogue asteroids. The film includes an original soundtrack featuring electronic music label Ed Banger Records and 1990s dance legends the Prodigy, as well as an orchestration by the International Space Orchestra.

Now she is working on her next big feature film, digital platform and exhibition entitled The Life, the Sea and the Space Viking.

Described as a “space odyssey and Viking saga 11km under the sea”, the film will document how minute life on Earth can inform colonisation across distant planets.

“It’s probably my biggest project, working with eight other scientists and looking for forms of life with the perspective that all we need to know about other space colonisation is actually here on Earth,” says Ben Hayoun.

Then there's the University of the Underground, the free MA programme she launched earlier this year and which her studio manages.

Spread across two continents and a number of different countries and states, how does one person have enough time for all of this?

“I have doppelgängers,” she smiles. “Sometimes I don’t go to a place, but they go instead of me. It does work. People know that it’s Nelly 2.0 or 3.0, but my doppelgängers know what they have to say and go instead. There’s a lot to say about the expense of being physically somewhere, you know?”

Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun is one of a wide variety of speakers taking part in The Future conference at the RDS in Dublin from November 2-4. For more information, and to book tickets, see

https://www.businesspost.ie/magazine/spacewoman-came-travelling-400605

Sports: Armenian lifter ‘strongest favorite’ to win European Championships gold

October 15, 2017October 15, 2017 Mike Maghakian

Pan Armenian, Armenia

Oct 14 2017

Armenian lifter 'strongest favorite' to win European Championships gold

The Olympic super-heavyweight silver medallist Simon Martirosyan is one of nearly 150 weightlifters who will compete at the European Junior and Under-23 Championships over the next week, before sitting out a year of exile from international competition, Inside the Games says.

Martirosyan, the strongest favourite to win gold in any of the categories here in the host city of Durres, Albania, is from Armenia, one of the seven European nations who are about to begin a one-year ban from the sport.

A total of nine nations have been banned by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) for having three or more positives in the retesting of doping samples from the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Olympic Games.

Kazakhstan and China are the only non-Europeans.

Antonio Urso, the Italian President of the European Weightlifting Federation (EWF), said: "This is a really sad moment for me and for European weightlifting but it is a necessary situation.

"We must stop and think about the future of our sport."

The EWF Executive Board met today to discuss "how to push in a cultural way to cancel this problem".

"History shows us that changing a culture is a slow process," Urso added.

Azerbaijani Press: Baku Not to Allow Transportation of Armenian Goods by Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway

October 15, 2017October 15, 2017 Mike Maghakian

Turan Information Agency, Azerbaijani Opposition

Friday

Baku Not to Allow Transportation of Armenian Goods by Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway

Baku / 13.10.17 / Turan: In the end of October, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway (BTK) will be put into operation. It will annually transport about a million passengers and five million tons of cargo.

The BTK route bypasses Armenia. But Armenian businessmen intend to use this way, taking their cargoes by the working Yerevan-Tbilisi railway and adding Armenian cars in Georgia to the train going to Kars.

"Armenian cargo carriers will certainly take advantage of the opportunity to transport goods on the future BTK railway, if such an opportunity arises," the director general of an Armenian forwarding company Gagik Aghajanyan told the Russian news agency Regnum.

"While the Kars-Akhuryan route between Turkey and Armenia is closed, Armenian cargo carriers will try to take advantage of the BTK opportunities, which, in all likelihood, will lead to an increase in the cargo transit flow to Armenia," Aghajanyan said.

Azerbaijan for the construction of the Georgian section of the road allocated a loan of $ 775 million. Financing of this project by the State Oil Fund is carried out in accordance with the Decree of the President of Azerbaijan On Implementing Activities on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Project dated February 21, 2007.

Can Azerbaijan prevent Armenians from taking advantage of the new road, given that Baku financed most of the construction of this road?

The Georgian political scientist Vakhtang Mansaya believes the main interests of the project owners, that is Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, must first of all be taken into account in the work of the BTK railroad.

Turan asked officials in the Ministry of Communications, High Technologies and Transport and the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC about the possibility for the Armenians to use the BTK road. The Ministry reported the CJSC is engaged in works on BTK. An employee of the railway company, who did not want to be named, firmly assured the Armenian cargo will not appear on the BTK railway. "This is the political will of Azerbaijan," he added.

But the official could not explain the mechanism by which the Armenian railway cars that come to Georgia will not be attached to the locomotive carrying the train to Turkey. There is no corresponding item in the documents on the BTK project.

"We are working hard to launch the new railway in a timely manner, and when it starts to function, you will see that Armenian goods are not transported by it," the employee of the international relations department of the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC promised Turan.–0–

Stella Kyriakides Elected PACE President

October 11, 2017October 11, 2017 Mike Maghakian

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Stella Kyriakides

Armenian Delegation Welcomes Newly Elected PACE President

STRASBOURG, France – On October 10, Cyprus representative Stella Kyriakides (Cyprus, EPP/CD) was elected President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe following the resignation of Pedro Agramunt (Spain, EPP/CD) on October 6.

She obtained a large majority over the other candidate, Emanuelis Zingeris (Lithuania, EPP/CD), in the third round of voting. She will remain in office until the opening of the next ordinary session (Strasbourg, 22-26 January 2018).

Both were candidates from the group of the European People’s Party. After the vote, Kiriakides took the chair of the PACE president in the presidium.

She will be the 30th President of PACE since 1949, the first Cypriot, and the third woman to take up the post.

“This election comes during extraordinary times for this Assembly, times that have seen our credibility and integrity questioned. Times that have led to the often wrong type of publicity for the work done in this Assembly, leading to the questioning of the principles of transparency and integrity of the institutions of the Council of Europe. These are challenges and responsibilities for us all. But mostly, for myself as a newly elected President of this Assembly,” said Kyriakides.

“My decision to run for the Presidency stemmed solely from my firm belief in Parliamentary Assembly, in democracy, human rights and the rule of law and my passion to work tirelessly. Today you have given me the opportunity, with the trust you have placed in me, to work towards these. In the upcoming few months my priority is to bring about calmness, consensus, credibility and unity. To work tirelessly and openly against corruption. To raise the bar so that we all follow the same principles and code of ethics. To do this, I will need the support of all political groups, of the Secretary General and the staff of the Council of Europe. Because this is why we are all here,” she concluded.

The Armenian delegation supported the candidacy of Kyriakides. The delegation justified its position by the fact that the name of the representative of Cyprus is not involved in any scandals or deals, during the PACE’s work, it has established itself as a principled, objective and honest politician.

The former PACE President Agramunt stepped down from his post on October 6 citing “personal reasons.” PACE lawmakers were expected to impeach Agramunt during the October session of the parliamentary assembly.

Born on March 10, 1956 in Nicosia, Cyprus, Kyriakides studied psychology at Reading and Manchester Universities. At the Cypriot Ministry of Health, she was in charge of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from 1979-2006.

She was elected to the Parliament of Cyprus in 2006, where she is a member of the Committee on Health Affairs and of the Committee on Foreign and European Affairs and Vice-President of the Democratic Rally Party.

President of the First Breast Cancer Movement in Cyprus in 1999, she was appointed by the Ministerial Council as President of the National Committee on Cancer Strategy in 2016. She organized the first breast cancer awareness campaign at the Council of Europe in 2013.

At the Assembly, she was Chairperson of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development as well as a member of the Monitoring Committee and the Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination.

She was a contact parliamentarian for the “No Hate Parliamentary Alliance” and the Council of Europe campaign against Child Sexual Abuse (2013-2015), as well as the General Rapporteur for Children’s Rights (2013-2015).

Kyriakides is the Chairperson of the delegation of Cyprus to PACE and a member of the EPP/CD group.