Author: Nyrie Kalashian

On 20 March President Bako Sahakyan signed a decree releasing Artur Aghabekyan from the post of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic according to his own request, Central Information Department of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President reports.

Asbarez – The Los Angeles premiere of “The Last Inhabitant,” filmed in the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Republic, will take place on April 7 at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California.

The screening is presented by the Artskah Arts and Cultural Foundation.

Inspired by true events, The Last Inhabitant is an Art House film with English subtitles filmed in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). It was considered for the 2017 Golden Globe Awards.

Evicted as a result of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Abgar stays behind alone in a gradually shrinking enemy ring. He is waiting for his daughter, who has become a witness to her husband’s murder by an angry mob and was hospitalized with a trauma disorder. An Azerbaijani named Ibrahim, in exchange for finding and bringing Abgar’s daughter, suggests that Abgar work on the construction of a mosque. A few days later, Ibrahim finds the girl, named Yurga, in one of the psychiatric hospitals of Baku and brings her to Abgar.

Photo: AFP

 

President Donald Trump has said the US is witnessing a “renewal of the American spirit”, as he delivered his first speech to Congress, the BBC reports.

Adopting a measured, upbeat tone, the Republican president spoke of a “new chapter of American greatness”.

Mr Trump condemned recent vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and a shooting in Kansas that left an Indian man dead.

His primetime address sought to bolster his low approval ratings after a bumpy start to his fledgling presidency.

At the outset of Tuesday night’s hour-long speech, Mr Trump tackled recent suspected hate crimes, saying “we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its very ugly forms”.

At the outset of Tuesday night’s hour-long speech, Mr Trump tackled recent suspected hate crimes, saying “we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its very ugly forms”.

On immigration, he dangled the intriguing possibility of a major policy shift towards a goal that eluded his two predecessors, insisting that “real and positive” reform was possible.

That line came hours after he told news anchors off the record at a White House lunch that he might be open to granting legal status to undocumented immigrants.

In his remarks on Capitol Hill, the president also talked tough on the issue, pledging to make US communities safer “by finally enforcing our immigration laws”.

He defended his early actions in office, touting his moves to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and order work to start on a US-Mexico border wall.

An agreement on the elections of the Patriarch of Istanbul has been reached after two days of discussions at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin.

Bishop Sahak Masalyan, General Vicar of the Patriarch of Istanbul Aram Atesyan and Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Germany Karekin Bekdjian came together in Yerevan for a meeting chaired by His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians.

Thus, the Locum Tenens will be elected by the Clerical Assembly by March 15. The elections will terminate the powers of the General Vicar of the Patriarch Aram Atesyan. The Bishops will have equal rights to participate in the elections of the Locum Tenens.

After the elections, the Clerical Assembly will form a commission comprising clergymen and secular figures to organize the transfer of power from the General Vicar to the Locum Tenens.

The elections of the initiative group will be organized within 10 days after the election of the Locum Tenens. The group will, in turn, organize the elections of the Patriarch of Istanbul within a six-month period.

Russia will miss this summer’s World Championships after athletics’ governing body voted to extend their suspension from international competition for state-sponsored doping, the BBC reports.

However, some Russians may be able to compete under a neutral banner, if they can satisfy testing criteria.

Russia was suspended by the IAAF in November 2015, meaning athletes missed the Rio Olympics last year.

The country is now not expected to be fully reinstated until November.

London will host the World Championships between 4-13 August.

The decision to extend Russia’s suspension came at an IAAF Council meeting in Monaco on Monday.

“Territorial integrity of a country can’t be opposed to the people’s right to self-determination,” Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan has said.

The comments come after the statement of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the opening of a military camp in Baku.

“We will never allow the creation of the second fictitious Armenian state on the territory of Azerbaijan. Nagorno-Karabakh will never be granted independence”, Aliyev said.

“The fact that the state of Azerbaijan appeared on the world’s map less than a century ago, cannot serve as a justification for Azerbaijani leadership’s lack of knowledge of fundamental norms of international law,” Shavarsh Kocharyan said in comments to Panorama.am.

“It is worth reminding that according to the UN Charter the status of self-determined subject is decided by its people, and the territorial integrity of a country can’t be opposed to the people’s right to self-determination,” he added.

“The leadership of Azerbaijan should have read the UN Charter long ago not to become an object of mockery with its rattling illiteracy, and should come to terms with the inevitability of the prospective to recognize the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic,” the Deputy Foreign Minister stated.

On January 24, 2017, in accordance with the arrangement reached with the authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, the OSCE Mission will conduct a planned monitoring of the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, in the north-west of Seysulan village of the NKR Martakert region, the NKR Foreign Ministry informs.

From the positions of the NKR Defense Army, the monitoring will be conducted by Field Assistants to the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Jiri Aberle (Czech Republic) and Ghenadie Petrica (Moldova).

The NKR authorities have expressed their readiness to assist in conducting the monitoring and to ensure the security of the OSCE Mission members.

Georgia’s Energy Minister, Deputy Prime Minister Kakha Kaladze is set to hold another meeting with the leadership of Gazprom Export Company to discuss the transit of Russian gas to Armenia, RIA Novosti reports.

The meeting will be the third over the past month.

According to Kaladze, during the meetings the parties work on the conclusion of a new annual agreement, under which the parties will either shift to the financial reimbursement or will stick to the former conditions of the deal. No consensus has yet been reached.

The Energy Minister says Georgia should get an equivalent reimbursement in case the parties opt for financial payment.

Photo: Vahram Baghdasaryan/Photolure

 

By Chris Bohjalian

The forward trenches in the hills just beyond the abandoned village of Talish, in Nagorno-Karabakh, are reminiscent of World War I: long, endless, slits in the ground, the dirt buttressed by wood, with periodic firing posts and dugouts. Stacked tires packed with dirt stand in for sandbags, but otherwise it looks like the Western Front 100 years ago. Behind the trenches, alongside the road, tanks are angled to counterattack.

On the first day of September, the sky cerulean, Capt. Gegham Grigoryan, 32, stood with me and pointed toward the northeast — toward Azerbaijan and the minefield and buffer zone less than a mile away.

“If you want peace, you should prepare for war,” he said, shrugging.

Earlier this year, Nagorno-Karabakh, his small, unrecognized Armenian republic, got war. Azerbaijan attacked across the eastern border in the small hours of April 2, breaking a cease-fire that had largely held since 1994. Here in Talish, the 400-person village was so badly shelled that today it has been abandoned and the residents resettled in other parts of the country.

Captain Grigoryan, a father of two girls, has a degree in international relations, but believes that Nagorno-Karabakh needs him in the military: “It is better for me to wear a uniform than a suit.”

Very few Americans could find Nagorno-Karabakh on a map. (Very few of us, of course, could find Armenia and Azerbaijan, either.) I went there this summer for the same reason that I return every year to Armenia and the remnants of Armenian civilization that are scattered across eastern Turkey: This earth is in my blood, and my visits are a pilgrimage. I am an Armenian-American, but only at midlife did I understand the draw of this ancient land for me.

The line of contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan is strategically significant; it is one of those hot spots that could destabilize the Caucasus. Armenia and Azerbaijan share a border with Iran. After Azerbaijan attacked Nagorno-Karabakh in April, the two sides battled four days before agreeing to a cease-fire. It was a brief, violent conflict involving tanks, artillery and drones that left hundreds of soldiers dead. In the fighting in Talish, Azeri soldiers executed and mutilated an elderly Armenian civilian couple and beheaded a captured Armenian soldier, leading a United States representative, Brad Sherman, Democrat of California and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to call for an investigation into Azeri war crimes.

Although the Armenians are Christian and the Azeris are Muslim, the issue has little to do with religion. Azerbaijan insists it owns Nagorno-Karabakh, citing its right to territorial integrity. Nagorno-Karabakh argues that it is entitled to exist independently because of the right of all peoples to self-determination.

Certainly there are analysts who argue that the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh are an occupying force. I don’t agree. But I don’t side with Nagorno-Karabakh simply because of my DNA. I believe that history is on the Armenians’ side.

In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian majority — then part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic — voted to become part of the Armenian Soviet Republic. (In the 1920s, Karabakh’s Armenians had insisted that self-determination was their prerogative under the Soviet constitution. Nevertheless, in 1923, Joseph Stalin gave Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.) But the Soviet Union was incapable of managing the violence that erupted — including Azeri rage directed at Armenians in the Azerbaijani cities of Baku and Sumgait — forcing most Armenians to flee to Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh. On Sept. 2, 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed itself an independent country, and for the next three years its Armenians fought a war with the Azeris, which they would win in 1994, with the help of Armenia itself. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 people would die, and perhaps as many as one million were displaced.

Nagorno-Karabakh is largely unrecognized by the international community (though seven American states have passed resolutions urging the United States government to support its independence). The republic is a fledgling democracy of 140,000 people, facing off against an oil-rich dictatorship with a population of 9.5 million. Its only ally is Armenia, which is often the small republic’s lifeline. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has assigned diplomats from France, Russia and the United States to try to broker a permanent agreement, but they’ve made little progress.

“Azerbaijan has shown consistently it is incapable of governing Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Ruben Melikyan to me when we had coffee recently in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital of Stepanakert. Mr. Melikyan is the country’s ombudsman, or human rights defender. “It’s not merely an issue of a people’s right to self-determination. It’s a people’s right to self-determination who are in peril of extermination.”

This is no small distinction. President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has threatened to shoot down passenger planes that fly into the new Stepanakert airport; the airport has yet to open. He promoted to major the Azeri soldier who murdered an Armenian soldier in his sleep during a peaceful, NATO-sponsored training seminar in Budapest. And most recently President Aliyev broke the cease-fire with a huge, unprovoked offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh in April, an onslaught that included the shelling of two schools. (It was nighttime so the schools were empty, but among the first casualties in the war was a 12-year-old boy killed in a missile attack.)

After spending time with people in Nagorno-Karabakh, it’s clear to me that the only way the nation will ever again be a part of Azerbaijan is if Azerbaijan conquers it. And despite Azerbaijan’s being vastly larger, I can’t imagine that ever will happen. Armenians had lived on this land for centuries before it was incorporated into Azerbaijan. My first day there I went to a baptism of 39 Armenian children in a church built in 1673. Dadivank, the Armenian monastery in the north, began construction in the ninth century. Its frescoes, which date from 1297, are as lovely as any I’ve seen in Tuscany.

Its people are fiercely protective of their home. Among the parents I met at that baptism were Anton and Areknaz Abkarian. Their three children, all under 5, were baptized that afternoon. They have a small farm. But when the Azeris attacked in April, Mr. Abkarian went straight to the front lines as a volunteer. His wife and his mother ran the farm.

“Who will defend my children and my family if not me?” Mr. Abkarian asked me rhetorically. He is a quiet, unassuming young man, but his smile is broad when he talks about his country or shares the honey from his apiary.

The fact is, the only dog Azerbaijan has in this fight is pride. It has the oil; Nagorno-Karabakh has scrub brush and pomegranates.

But for the Armenians it is a fight for survival. It is the retention of a part of our homeland. Yes, we were ethnically cleansed from Van and Anatolia and Cilicia — virtually all of Turkey but Istanbul — during the Armenian Genocide. Three out of every four of us there were systematically annihilated during World War I.

And so Nagorno-Karabakh is our line in the sand. It is why Anton Abkarian rushed to the front and Gegham Grigoryan traded his suit for a uniform. It is why this small country, as tiny as it is, always has enough soldiers for the trenches.

The Council of the Eurasian Fund for Stabilisation and Development (the EFSD, the Fund) has approved disbursement of the second tranche of the EFSD financial credit of US$ 100 million to the Republic of Armenia. The key areas of reforms supported under the EFSD programme include strengthening the financial soundness of the energy sector, raising the efficiency of the public finance management, and improving the investment climate. In the framework of the programme, the reforms to promote de-dollarization of the economy, greater credibility of the banking sector, and higher exports have also been continued. The assessment of Armenia’s performance prepared by the Manager is generally positive.

Implementation of the tranche’s conditionalities had a positive effect on strengthening the financial sustainability of the energy sector. Owing to improved methodologies of tariff margin calculation and the forecast of electricity generation and distribution aimed at greater flexibility of the tariff policies and enabling demand and supply shock smoothing, the Electric Network of Armenia CJSC [closed joint-stock company] has fully repaid accumulated arrears to the Armenian NPP, Yerevan CHP, and the High-Voltage Network totalling US$ 50 million that is equivalent to 56% of the companies’ electricity supply (turnover) over the period of the arrears repayment (December 2015 – July 2016).

A range of legislative acts have been developed to improve the efficiency of the public finance management. In early October 2016, the National Assembly of Armenia adopted the first ever national Tax Code that streamlines and improves the tax legislation in the framework of a single document. With the Tax Code coming into effect, the tax potential of the economy will be significantly strengthened—the cumulative growth of tax revenues in 2017-2021 is estimated at 2% of GDP—and the tax policies will become more stable and predictable. Amendments to the Procurement Law have been presented for the consideration of the National Assembly of Armenia to expand the practice of electronic public procurement for the needs of government bodies, thus facilitating more efficient budget spending and reducing risks of corruption. The reforms to improve the investment climate have been continued. Simplified and expanded access of potential investors to information detailing the rules of doing business in construction, as well as expanded practice of using an electronic system of issuing construction permits will help reduce transaction costs in the construction sector and make the sector more attractive for investors.

A register of moveable assets has been created to improve accessibility of credit for the private sector by introduction a secured transaction framework and to reduce the cost of loans by lowering the risk premium. The country’s monetary authorities have adopted a range of regulatory and legal acts aimed at reducing the level of dollarization of deposits and loans, strengthening the credibility of the banking system and promoting exports. These measures have serves as an additional incentive for exports development that has been the key driver of Armenia’s economic growth in recent years.

One indicative condition had not been met by the control date for the second tranche (1 October 2016). It is related to establishing 10 new centres of integrated social services operating as ‘one stop shops’ to supplement the 18 centres created under the first tranche. The failure to implement this measure is explained by the fact that the premises transferred to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in late 2015 – early 2016 to house the centres of integrated social services did not meet the seismic resistance standards, therefore a range of additional measures had to be taken resulting in delays in implementing the steps. The Ministry has drafted a new schedule of launching 20 centres of integrated social services, under which only two centres are to become operational by the control date for the third tranche (1 October 2017), while the remaining centres will become operational in 2018. The Fund Council has recommended the Government of the Republic of Armenia to reconsider and agree with the Manager the parameters of this condition for the third tranche in accordance with the new schedule of launching the centres of integrated social services.

The EFSD Council has also recommended to supplement the conditionality of the third tranche of the financial credit with new control targets aimed at maintaining the fiscal and debt sustainability and present the updated reform programme for the consideration of the EFSD Council in early 2017. These adjustments will, in particular, facilitate lowering the budget deficit in 2017 to the level of 2.8% of GDP planned by the Government against 5.9% of GDP forecasted for 2016, and bringing the debt burden down in the medium-term perspective.