Author: nina hovnanian

ASSISTANT SECRETARY GENERAL OF UN ARRIVED IN ARMENIA

news.am
July 15 2011
Armenia

YEREVAN. – Director of the Regional Bureau of UNDP for Europe and
Commonwealth of Independent States, assistant Secretary General of
UN Kori Udovicki arrived in Armenia with two-day official visit
on Thursday, press service of UN Yerevan office informs Armenian
News-NEWS.am.

Udovicki will meet Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Armenian PM
Tigran Sargsyan and other high ranked officials. Key issues of the
development on social-economic sphere will be discussed during the
meetings.

Other global and regional issues are also included in the agenda. In
particular, climate change, economic crisis, social inequality,
and prevention of disaster will be discussed.

Assistant Secretary General of UN will also meet representatives
of international donor-organizations in Armenia aiming to discuss
perspectives of future partnership.

EU GRANTED EURO 400,000 TO FIGHT CHILD TRAFFICKING IN ARMENIA

news.am
July 14 2011
Armenia

YEREVAN. – European Union granted Armenia about ~@400,000 since 2009
to increase awareness on children trafficking and creation of system
to prevent this crime, EU delegation representative in Armenia Onno
Simons said at a press conference on Thursday.

“The target group of the program, which started in 2009 and lasted
for 27 months, includes children from orphanages, schools, teachers
and pupils of care center, as well as law enforcement bodies, social
service employees and street children devoid of parental care,”
Simons said.

Simons stressed she is aware of the case of former prime minister
aide, American-Armenian businessman Serob Ter-Poghosyan accused of
pedophilia. She said that the authorities showed adequate response
to this case.

ARMENIANS PEEL BACK THE LAYERS OF A PAINFUL PAST

Guardian Weekly
Tuesday 28 June 2011 13.59 BST

Memoir helps Turks and Armenians explore their identities and the
legacy of the 1915 genocide

Guillaume Perrier

Painful past… a memorial to the genocide. Photograph: Vahan
Stepanyan/Getty

In 2004, when the lawyer Fethiye Cetin published My Grandmother:
A Memoir, she breached the wall of silence in Turkey. The book
tells the story of her Armenian ancestor Heranouch, who was renamed
Seher. She was kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam at the time
of the 1915 genocide carried out by the Turkish nationalist party
(CUP). Her granddaughter, a human rights campaigner and counsel for
the family of Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist murdered in 2007,
was one of the first to publicise her Armenian origins, in defiance
of the taboo that still paralyses much of Turkey.

Hundreds of similar stories have since surfaced, revealing facts that
had conveniently been forgotten. Scattered all over the country were
Armenian descendants, who had survived the slaughter but at the price
of being converted to Islam and losing their identity. They are still
commonly known as the “remains of the sword”.

>From grandmothers Cetin has turned her attention, in partnership with
sociologist Ayse Gul Altinay, to their descendants, all those who two
generations later are gradually uncovering their past and questioning
official accounts and the silence imposed on their lives. “Where
are the converted Armenians?” Altinay writes in the afterword to Les
Petits-Enfants. “You may pass them in schools, in the corridors of the
National Assembly, in hospitals and factories, in the fields, in the
office of a police chiefs or in a mosque. They could be driving your
bus, or the nurse who took your blood sample, a journalist whose column
you like, the engineer who installed your computer […] or the imam at
your neighbourhood mosque,” she adds. The authors discovered dozens of
such people, but only a few were prepared to tell their story, and even
fewer agreed to reveal their identity. The book contains 24 personal
accounts, portraits of families that all have a hidden Armenian side.

Yildiz Onen, another human rights campaigner, agreed to come out
and tell her story in her own name. She was born in Derik, a small
town in the Kurdish region of eastern Turkey and “brought up as a
Kurd”. The story of her grandmother, the daughter of a rich Armenian
trader who survived the genocide with one of his sons, “resembles that
of thousands of other women”. She was kidnapped by a Kurd, married
and forcibly converted. “My father was born of this union,” Onen
says. “My grandmother raised two sons, one in keeping with Armenian
tradition, the other as a Kurd. So my father, a conservative Muslim,
had an Armenian brother.”

As in other cases Dink’s murder prompted a reappraisal of her
hidden identity. “At that point I started thinking I too should
feel Armenian,” she says. Feeling Armenian also means being seen
differently, even by her own family. “Some cousins are open-minded,
others less so,” she adds.

After the genocide the second generation of survivors, regardless of
whether they stayed in Turkey or emigrated, was brought up in a state
of denial, the better to fit in and to stifle painful memories. “As if
our difference was a stain, a taboo, a source of shame,” says Gulsad,
who found out by chance when he was about 15 that his grandmother
Satinik was Armenian.

Now some grandchildren are demanding an explanation. Cetin estimates
that there are hundreds of thousands of Turks with at least one
Armenian ancestor. Their identity is often “hybrid”, a mixture of
Turkish, Kurdish, Alevi, Armenian and other origins. Some stayed
Armenian, despite converting to Islam. Others say they are Kurds but
are converting back to Christianity.

“There is an incredible diversity in the way people define themselves,”
the lawyer says. For almost a century the existence of these hidden
survivors was not only hushed up by the Turkish government, but
forgotten by the Armenian community. The grandchildren’s memories
are resurrecting forgotten victims of the 20th century’s first
genocide. This account lifts a taboo as part of a historic process
of reconciliation. By investigating family and village history,
Turkish intellectuals may have found the means to counter the official
revisionism that whitewashes the Armenian question.

This article originally appeared in Le Monde

OBAMA’S NOMINEE FOR US AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA REFUSES TO USE THE WORD ‘GENOCIDE’

arminfo
Thursday, July 14, 12:20

President Barack Obama’s nominee for US ambassador to Armenia told
Senators Wednesday he would not use the word “genocide” to describe the
killing of more than one million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

“As the president has said, the massacres and the forced deportations
leading to the death of 1.5 millions of Armenians is acknowledged and
recognized and deplored by President Obama, and yes sir, I believe
it as well,” nominee John Heffern said, responding to skeptical
questioning by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

“The characterization of those events is a policy decision that is made
by the president of the United States and that policy is enunciated
in his April 24th Remembrance Day statement,” Heffern told Menendez
and other members of the Senate Foreign Affairs panel.

The issue is extremely sensitive in Turkey, a key US military and
economic ally, which rejects any suggestion that the massacres
constituted a genocide.

In April, Obama commemorated the 96th anniversary of the Armenian
massacre under the Ottoman empire, asking Turkey, the latter-day
successor to the empire, for a “full” acknowledgement of the killings.

Obama did not use the word genocide during his commemoration address,
although he had urged its use during his 2008 run for the presidency.

Menendez, however, told Heffern he found it “difficult to be sending
diplomats of the United States to a country in which they will go
(…) to a genocide commemoration and yet never be able to use the
word genocide.

“It is much more than a question of a word,” he added. “It is
everything that signifies our commitment to saying ‘Never Again’
and yet we cannot even acknowledge this fact and we put diplomats in
a position that I think is totally untenable.”

K. NAZARYAN SAYS THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL SHOULD KEEP IN FOCUS AND TO SANCTION THOSE WHO COMMIT CRIMES AND OFFENCES AGAINST CHILDREN

ARMENPRESS
JULY 14, 2011
YEREVAN

Armenian Ambassador to the UN, Karen Nazaryan, at the UN Security
Council speaking on “Children and armed conflict” said that the topic
discussed was not only a painful humanitarian issue for Armenia,
but also was an important security issue.

According to the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of
Armenia, he reminded that in the early 90s as a result of the war
imposed to Armenia, Yerevan provided tens of thousands of Armenian
refugee children with refuges. Brutalities were implemented against
these children, and their hospitals, kindergartens and schools were
regularly attacked by the artillery and rockets.

K. Nazaryan said that the UN Security Council should keep in focus
and to sanction those who commit crimes and offences against children.

HISTORY OF PEACE PROCESS DISRUPTIONS: STARRING ARMENIA

Today’s Zaman
July 14 2011
Turkey

The last several years of ongoing negotiations regarding
Nagorno-Karabakh have seen intense emotions brought to both sides of
the conflict. Mediated by several countries within the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group’s framework and
outside it, including the United States, Russia and Iran, the peace
talks have yet to yield substantial results, not only in resolving
the territorial conflict but in rebuilding trust between the two
neighboring nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

A great deal of blame is laid upon the conflicting parties each and
every time talks are held with the participation of the leaders of
OSCE Minsk Group co-chair states. The recent Kazan meeting was no
exception. As though it had been predetermined that the talks were
bound to fail, officials, analysts and the media are always prepared
to storm the mass media with terms like “cease-fire violations,”
“unconstructive stance” and “disruption of the peace talks.” The
abundance of such language in the media in the days following a round
of talks causes inescapable moral nausea.

More normal would be to hear both sides of a conflict accuse each
other of unconstructive positions during peace talks, with mediators
stopping short of blaming either side. However, the magnitude of the
growing accusatory rhetoric from both the Armenian and Azerbaijani
sides makes us wonder which side is more likely to sabotage and disrupt
the peace process. A short list of disruptions to the peace process
in this particular conflict begins very early, before the Soviet
Union officially ceased to exist, and has a lot to offer for analysis.

In late 1991, three-and-a-half years after the Armenian Soviet
Socialist Republic (SSR) unilaterally announced its unconstitutional
annexation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), a part of
the Azerbaijan SSR, the leadership of the sovereign Russian Federation
led by Boris Yeltsin and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan spearheaded
a peacemaking mission to resolve the escalating bloody conflict in
Nagorno-Karabakh. The agreement was finally reached after a four-day
visit of the Russian-led peacemaking team to Baku, Ganja, Khankendi
(Stepanakert) and Yerevan, and under it the Armenian government led by
Levon Ter-Petrossian formally renounced all of its territorial claims
in Azerbaijan. These accords, signed on Sept. 23, 1991 and later to be
known as the Zheleznovodsk Accords, committed both sides to peaceful
resolution of the conflict, disarming the conflicting parties, and
allowing for the return of refugees and internally displaced persons
(IDPs) and the restoration of law and order while the peacemakers
continued to seek ways of resolution.

Everything seemed to work out fine until one cold November night. On
the evening of Nov. 20, 1991, a Soviet helicopter carrying a
peacemaking team of 22 high-ranking officials from Kazakhstan, Russia
and Azerbaijan, along with journalists and crew members, and excluding
any Armenian officials, was shot down by Armenian militants over the
Azerbaijani village of Qarakend in the Khojavend district. All on
board died. After the public burial of the victims in Baku on Nov. 22,
Azerbaijan would cease all negotiations with Armenia and abolish the
autonomous status of NKAO on Nov. 27, establishing its own direct
rule over Karabakh.

The disruption of the Zheleznovodsk Accords led to an escalation of
the conflict. In early December, Kerkijahan, a suburb of Khankendi,
saw extreme violence against the Azerbaijani civilian population. The
shooting down of civilian helicopters transporting Azerbaijani
civilians to and from Shusha would follow in January 1992.

Renewed efforts to mediate peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia
were initiated by Iran in early February 1992 in what came to be
known as “shuttle diplomacy” in the Caucasus. Foreign Minister Ali
Akbar Velayeti visited Baku, Yerevan and Khankendi, trying to strike
a peace deal between the warring parties amid the eruption of military
activity and alleged ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijani civilians in the
villages of Qaradaghli, Malibeyli and Qushchular in Karabakh. However,
the peace talks were to stop with the escalation of war crimes,
when 613 Azerbaijani civilians were massacred by Armenian forces
in the town of Khojaly and its outskirts, just a short drive north
of Khankendi. Under pressure from the opposition and the public,
Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutalibov was forced to resign, halting
all mediated negotiations with Armenia.

The peace mediation efforts were renewed with Velayeti revisiting
both countries in March, and eventually arranging a trilateral
meeting in Tehran on May 7, 1992. At that meeting interim Azerbaijani
President and Parliament Speaker Yagub Memmedov, Armenian President
Ter-Petrossian and Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani signed
the Joint Statement of Heads of State, otherwise known as the Tehran
Communique, which sealed the commitment of both parties to peace,
inviolability of borders and finding a solution to the refugee crisis.

However, as the meeting was taking place, Armenia was making different
plans, preparing for a major assault on Shusha, the only remaining
Azerbaijani-populated town in Nagorno-Karabakh. On May 8, pending a
peace deal, undefended Shusha was attacked by and fell to Armenian
forces.

Although the Iranian envoy, Mahmood Vaezi, travelled to Baku to urge
a return to negotiations in mid May, Armenia proved its inability to
sustain peace with its occupation of Lachin on May 18, 1992. Betrayed
by this disruption of the peace process, Iran discontinued its
mediation efforts with a harshly critical message condemning Armenia’s
action in changing its border by force. All peace talks were suspended.

Given this reputation for disruption and sabotage of the peace process,
some experts tend to place the Armenian parliament shooting of October
1999, which followed compromises from both sides earlier that year in
an US-sponsored peace talks in Key West, in the category of activities
targeted to undermine the peace process.

Although military activities have largely ceased except for the
occasional exchange of sniper fire, and all terrorist activity is
at an end, the fact that the Armenian leadership has not worked
credibly to build consensus and trust between the parties shows its
lack of will to commit to peace. Hence the continuous disruptions
of the peace process in various shapes and forms which interfere
with regional development at large. All mediation efforts by Russia,
Iran and the US have so far been in vain. Armenia, which was ranked
by Forbes magazine after Madagascar as the second worst economy in
the world just this month, should seriously reconsider its position
within the peace process for the sake of its own economy and its so
far unpromising future among developing countries.

*Yusif Babanly is the co-founder and secretary of the US Azeris Network
(USAN) and a member of the board of directors of Azerbaijani American
Council.

ARMENIA GENERATES 16% MORE ELECTRICITY IN H1

Interfax
July 13 2011
Russia

Armenia generated 3.721 billion kWt hours of electric power in the
first half of this year, 16% more than in the same six months last
year, the country’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister Armen
Movsisyan announced at a press conference on Wednesday.

Domestic consumption in H1 increased 7.45% year-on-year during the
half, and electricity exports surged 60%, the minister said.

Power consumption among the country’s population increased 11% during
the period, among small and mid-sized businesses – 18%. Spending on
electrical energy for water supply and irrigation contracted 26%,
Movsisyan said.

AZERBAIJAN TO OPEN EMBASSIES IN SIX MORE COUNTRIES

news.az
July 14 2011
Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan has embassies and diplomatic missions in 65 countries
worldwide at present.

The statement came from head of the foreign relations department at
the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Novruz Mammadov.

Embassies of Azerbaijan will be opened in five to six more countries
soon, but persons to lead these diplomatic missions have not been
appointed yet, Mammadov said.

‘This is actually a good fact. Moreover, when compared with other
states, you can see that this is a very good indicator. Most of
the countries of our level have not more than 40-50 embassies in
foreign countries. This once again shows development of Azerbaijan,
its place in the international arena, rating and efficiency of external
relations,’ he added.

Baku urges Armenia to use chance to settle Karabakh conflict

Armenia should stop protracting the resolution of the Karabakh
conflict and use the current chance to settle the problem, said chief
of department for foreign relations of the Azerbaijani Presidential
Administration Novruz Mammadov.

‘The current situation is that it is necessary to make use and attain
the peaceful and fair resolution of the conflict’, Mammadov said in
the interview with the Azerbaijani TV channel.

He said the recent presentation of new initiatives of Russian President
Dmitriy Medvedev on the resolution of the conflict to the conflict
parties ~Qreally shows that a very important stage has come in the
negotiation process~R.

He continued that the same is proven by the ongoing visit of the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chairs to the conflict area and almost the ultimatum
statement of the mediating countries about the need to change the
status quo in the conflict.

‘However, unfortunately, the Armenian side is protracting the
attainment of the result under some pretense’, chief of the department
of the presidential administration said.

Azerbaijan, Turkey enjoy high-level relations

The relations between these two fraternal and friendly states will
further develop.

The statement came from Novruz Mammadov, official of the Presidential
Administration of Azerbaijan, while commenting on claims that
Azerbaijan-Turkey relations have cooled over last years.

These two states support each other to a great degree, the official
said.

‘Leaders, people and all structures are aware of this. Some may think
that these states experience certain problems. Siblings within a family
can also have problems. But the essence of a family is that they talk
and solve problems between them. I think that from this viewpoint
the relation, fraternity, friendship and partnership between Turkey
and Azerbaijan are unprecedented. The main point is that both sides
know this very well,’ Mammadov added.

Gun.Az, Interfax-Azerbaijan, 1news.az

ARMENIA’S INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS TO GET Â~B¬19.1 MILLION BOOST FROM EU

ENPI Info Centre

July 14 2011

The European Commission has pledged â~B¬19.1 million under this
year’s Annual Action Programme for Armenia to help boost its key
institutions responsible for cooperation with the EU. A press release
said the approval, on 13 July, of the 2011 Action Programme would help
“strengthen the technical and administrative capacity of key Armenian
institutions in charge of the implementation of future Armenia-EU
cooperation on trade, visa liberalisation, socio-economic reforms
and improved quality of governance.”

“The ‘Arab Spring’ led to increased expectations of governance reforms
across the European Neighbourhood,” Commissioner for Enlargement
and European Neighbourhood Policy Å tefan Fule underlined, adding:
“The impact that the changes had on the Eastern neighbourhood, Armenia
included, cannot be ignored. Today’s adoption of the Annual Action
Programme shows that the EU remains strongly committed to empowering
societies in the neighbourhood partner countries to take ownership
of these reforms, which are very much needed for the well-being of
their people.”

The 2011 Action Programme for Armenia (part I) deals mainly with
the Eastern Partnership Comprehensive Institution Building (CIB)
programme, which is central for preparing the foundations for the
Association Agreement and DCFTA.

The support package will address three key reform challenges in
Armenia:

â~@¢preparing for the EU-Armenia negotiations of the Association
Agreement; â~@¢advancing reforms in justice, liberty and security;
â~@¢preparing for the negotiations of the Deep and Comprehensive Free
Trade Area. (ENPI Info Centre)

POLICE BUST RUSSIAN GANG BELIEVED TO HAVE STOLEN GOLD WORTH KD 1M

Arab Times

July 10 2011
Kuwait English Daily

KUWAIT CITY, July 10: Officials of the Criminal Evidence Department
of the Interior Ministry arrested a six-member Russian gang which
specialized in stealing jewelry and valuables from grand villas and
jewelry shops in the country. The gang, which includes two women,
has reportedly stolen gold worth over KD 1 million over the last four
years. Its modus operandi included visiting Kuwait on visit visas
during summers, breaking into the villas of the rich, and escaping
out of the country with the loot. The head of the gang, however,
hasn’t been arrested yet.

A security source said officials noticed that thefts at villas in
Capital and Hawalli governorates had increased and that the thieves
were using advanced ways to open safes. He said money and gold
worth KD 200,000 was stolen over the last two months. Securitymen
then intensified investigations and managed to arrest a Russian
national of Armenian origin who was involved in a case in 2007. During
interrogations, he admitted that he was part of a gang that specialized
in stealing jewelry and revealed that he comes to Kuwait along with
the others every year on a commercial visit visa sponsored by a hotel.

He also confessed that his wife was on her way to the airport with the
stolen gold and forged passports. Securitymen arrested the woman and
during interrogation, the couple gave details of four other members
of their gang, including a woman. All of them are believed to be
of Armenian origin. They were involved in a theft case a couple of
years ago. The members said they smuggle the jewelry out the country
to the seventh accused. Securitymen are looking for him.