FRENCH CO-CHAIR OF THE OSCE MINSK GROUP ARRIVING IN ARMENIA
armradio.am
06.03.2007 11:54
French Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Bernard Fassier will arrive
in Yerevan tonight. Armenpress was told at the French Embassy in
Armenia that on March 7 Bernard Fassier is scheduled to meet with RA
President Robert Kocharyan and Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian.
After the meetings the Co-Chair will leave Yerevan for Baku.
YSU THIRD OF ARMENIA’S SICENTIFIC POTENTIAL
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
March 2 2007
YEREVAN, March 2. /Novosti-Armenia/. A third of Armenia’s scientific
potential falls to the share of Yerevan State University (YSU),
YSU Rector Aram Simonyan told reporters.
"1,300 out of 4,000 scientific papers published in 2006 fall to
YSU’s share, which confirms that YSU remains the country’s leading
scientific center," he said.
According to Simonyan, the Government must pay more attention to the
scientific sector.
He pointed out that the RA Ministry of Education and Science has
started reforms and expressed hope that the concept of scientific
reforms will radically change the situation.
A total of AMD 5.5bln are budgeted for the scientific sector in
Armenia in 2007.
On August 18, 2006, the RA Government approved the schedule of measures
under the concept of scientific reforms.
The reforms are aimed at forming a universal system of state management
of Armenia’s scientific sector, enhancing the efficiency of scientific
institutions, modernizing the infrastructure and material and technical
base, specifying the major scientific fields to be developed in
Armenia, integrating science and education and commercializing
scientific products. P.T.
Turkey’s Armenian dilemma
Tuesday, 27 February 2007, 07:24 GMT
BBC News
Turkey did not always deny the mass killing of Armenians. As the US
House of Representatives prepares to vote on recognising the 1915
massacres as genocide, journalist and historian Bruce Clark looks at
how and why Turkish attitudes have changed over the past 90 years.
German soldier Armin Wegner took photos of Armenian deportees
"The more foreign parliaments insist that our forebears committed
crimes against humanity, the less likely anybody in Turkey is to face
up to the hardest moments in history."
That, roughly speaking, is the message being delivered by Turkey’s
hard-pressed intelligentsia as the legislators in one country after
another vote for resolutions which insist that the killing of hundreds
of thousands of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 amounted to genocide.
Will the adoption [of a resolution] help to inform the Turkish
public… on the great tragedy which befell the Ottoman Armenians?
"No, it can hardly be expected to… broaden the debate on the history
of the Ottoman Empire’s final period."
So writes Sahin Alpay, a liberal-minded Turkish academic, in a recent
column in Zaman newspaper.
What such appeals reflect, of course, is an elementary fact of human
psychology: the phenomenon of individual and collective defensiveness.
When people feel completely secure, and among friends, they can be
very frank about misdeeds which they, or people close to them, have
committed.
But hackles will go up again as soon as they become insecure, because
they feel their accusers are acting in bad faith, or that accepting
their accusations will have bad consequences.
On the defensive
In recent years, liberal Turkish scholars have expressed the hope that
membership, or even prospective membership of the European Union, will
give the country enough confidence to discuss the Armenian tragedy
without threatening those who use the "g-word" with prosecution.
Wegner recorded scenes of refugee life such as a funeral rite in a camp
Sceptics may retort that in recent years, things have been moving in
the opposite direction: the revised Turkish penal code and its
preamble, adopted in 2005, make even more explicit the principle that
people may be prosecuted if they "insult Turkishness" – a crime which,
as the preamble makes clear, includes the assertion that the Ottoman
Armenians suffered genocide.
It is certainly true that Turkish defensiveness – the sort of
defensiveness which can treat open discussion as verging on treachery
– has been running high since the 1960s when the Armenians round the
world began lobbying for an explicit acceptance, by governments and
parliaments, that their people suffered genocide in 1915.
A campaign of violence launched by Armenian militants in the 1970s,
who mainly attacked Turkish diplomatic targets and claimed over 50
lives, raised hackles even higher.
All that raises a question: has there ever been a moment, since the
events of 1915, when the Turkish authorities might, conceivably, have
acknowledged or even freely discussed the view that almost every
Armenians regards as self-evident: the view that in addition to
relocating the entire ethnic Armenian population of eastern Anatolia,
the "Committee of Union and Progress" (CUP) which wielded effective
power in the Ottoman empire also gave secret orders to make sure that
as few as possible of the deportees survived the experience?
In fact, there was such a moment: the immediate aftermath of World War I.
Tried and executed
At that time the Ottoman government was intact but dependent for its
survival on the good graces of the victorious British Empire.
The sultan’s regime was desperately trying to distance itself from the
actions of the CUP, the "state within a state" which in 1915 had
masterminded the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians –
and is alleged to have given secret "extermination" orders at the same
time.
During the early months of 1919, few people in Anatolia publicly
doubted that Armenians had suffered atrocities that were egregious
even by the standards of a terrible war.
The sultan and his foreign minister were at pains to reassure the
British of their determination to punish the perpetrators of these
atrocities, and they held four big and revealing trials whose
proceedings were published in the government gazette.
In April 1919 a local governor, Mehmed Kemal, was found guilty and
hanged for the mass killing of Armenians in the Ankara district.
But the climate shifted rapidly after May 1919, when Greek troops were
authorised by the victorious Entente powers to occupy the Aegean port
of Izmir and, in another part of Anatolia, Mustafa Kemal – later known
as Ataturk – began his campaign to make the Turks masters in their own
land.
Nationalist feeling
Turkish rage over the Greek landing lent fuel to the Kemalist cause,
and discredited the Ottoman government.
With every passing month, the British government’s leverage over the
Ottoman authorities waned, and so did British enthusiasm for the
conduct of war crimes trials.
In 1921, the British government made a pragmatic deal to release a
group of Turkish prisoners it had been holding in Malta on suspicion
(among other things) of crimes against the Armenians.
They were freed in exchange for Britons being held by the Turks.
In Turkish lore, this release is held up as proof that no serious
evidence against the captives existed.
What it certainly proves is that British zeal for investigating the
past was waning, even as the Kemalist cause gained strength and the
British-influenced Ottoman regime faded into oblivion.
In any case, the officially cherished version of the Turkish state’s
beginnings now insists since the empire’s British adversaries and
occupiers were the main promoters of war crimes trials, those trials
themselves must have been worthless or malicious.
A new state
But in the midst of all this nationalist discourse, something rather
important is often obscured, and there are just a few Turkish
historians who dare to point this out.
The atrocities against the Armenians were committed by an Ottoman
government, albeit a shadowy sub-section of that government.
There is no logical reason why a new republican administration,
established in October 1923 in an act of revolutionary defiance of
Ottoman power, should consider itself responsible for things done
under the previous regime.
In fact, when the nationalist movement was founded in 1919, the
climate of revulsion over the sufferings of the Armenians was so
general that even the neo-nationalists were keen to distinguish
themselves from the CUP.
Some see significance in the fact that the nationalist movement chose
to rally round an army officer, Mustafa Kemal, who had never been
anywhere near the places where the Armenians met their fate.
The very fact that the Turkish republic bears no formal responsibility
for eliminating the Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia (for the
simple reason that the republic did not exist when the atrocities
occurred) has given some Turkish historians a flicker of hope: one
day, the leaders of the republic will be able to face up to history’s
toughest questions about the Armenians, without feeling that to do so
would undermine the very existence of their state.
Fatma Muge Gocek, a Turkish-born sociologist who now works as
professor in America, has said there are – or will be – three phases
in her country’s attitude to the fate of the Armenians: a spirit of
"investigation" in the final Ottoman years, a spirit of defensiveness
under the Turkish republic, and a new, post-nationalist attitude to
history that will prevail if and when Turkey secures a places in
Europe.
That makes perfect psychological sense, even if the immediate
prospects for a move from phase two to phase three do not look very
bright.
Bruce Clark is international news editor of the Economist newspaper.
KARABAKH LEADER DISCUSSES KARABAKH TALKS WITH MAJOR ARMENIAN PARTY
Arminfo, Yerevan
27 Feb 07
Yerevan, 27 February: The president of the Nagornyy Karabakh
republic [NKR], Arkadi Ghukasyan, met members of the bureau of
the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun in Yerevan
on 26 February. The meeting was held in the building of the NKR
representative office in Yerevan.
The NKR representative office’s press service told Arminfo that the
issues of the negotiations for settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict and other issues of mutual interest were discussed in the
meeting.
RA NATIONAL ASSEMBLY HAD TO INTERRUPT ITS SITTING
Noyan Tapan
Feb 27 2007
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 27, NOYAN TAPAN. On February 27, adopting over two
dozens of issues and discussing some bills discussed the previous
day, RA National Assembly had to interrupt the sitting. In the words
of RA NA Speaker Tigran Torosian, the reason was purely technical:
the reporters of a small number of issues on agenda not discussed yet
were absent. In all probability, the sitting will be resumed at 17:00
and according to NA Regulations, the deputies will make statements
lasting maximum three minutes.
AZERBAIJANIS EVALUATE SECURITY OF ARMENIA
A1+
[08:41 pm] 27 February, 2007
Armenian, Azerbaidjani and Georgian politicians claim that the
principal threat towards the security of their countries is the
non-settled international conflict. Some Azeri politicians even find
the only jeopardy to be Armenia.
Laura Baghdasaryan, director of "Region" investigation center has
made public three-lingual brochure headed "Our Security and EU
Integration." The brochure covers a number of exclusive interviews
with different politicians. According to Azeri politicians, the
security of Republic of Armenia is in better condition. "There are
several reasons for it: Armenia is a homogeneous country and do not
have inner threats. Another reason is of great interest: Armenia is
more secure not being involved in communicative activities. As far
as oil resources are inexhaustible, Azerbaidjanis have the fear of
losing the outer world interest," Mrs. Baghdasaryan stated. In fact,
Vazgen Manukyan is the only oppositional politician, who believes
that there are only outer threats, whereas the inner problems are
solved thanks to unity.
Kiro Manoyan does not share the idea that EU Integration is an inner
issue."EU Integration for Europe is certainly an outer issue, as he
wants his neighbors to be predictable, though in South Caucasus it
is an inner issue. "
GUL: TURKEY TO REFORM FURTHER DESPITE NEGATIVE EU ‘CLIMATE’
The New Anatolian, Turkey
Feb 26 2007
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Saturday that the EU has
some problems and those problems should not be seen as permanent,
stating that commitment of Turkey to the full membership process is
not just rhetorical.
Gul, in an interview with "Euobserver.com," stated that Ankara will
continue reforms even if the "climate" in the EU towards Ankara’s
membership bid is currently not optimal.
"We made an assessment: The EU has some problems and these are not
permanent. There will be a better climate, and by that time, we will
already be in a different situation. We will use this time and make
progress. Our commitment to the full process is not just rhetorical,"
Gul said.
Underlining that Ankara will nevertheless continue to work to meet EU
standards, Gul said, "Negotiations are still going on, even if some
chapters have been frozen. The German presidency has asked for our
negotiating position on three other chapters without any benchmarks:
economy and market policy, statistics and financial control. We have
not slowed down our speed."
Gul also stated that EU shuold not underestimate the strategic clout
Turkey could offer to the bloc in the Middle East and Central Asia
in terms of security and energy supplies.
"The question is this: is the EU paying enough attention to its
future? Who is planning where the EU will be 30, 50 years from now?
Is the EU going to play an important role in world affairs? Is the EU
going to have a say in security issues or energy transport?" Gul said.
Last December 2006, EU leaders decided to temporarily suspend eight of
Turkey’s 35 accession negotiation chapters due to Ankara’s decision
not to open up its ports to trade from Greek Cyprus – seen by Gul as
an attempt by some EU member countries to "slow down" the speed of
accession negotiations with Ankara.
Meanwhile, Gul criticized French deputies as well as American
politicians who want to pass a bill condemning the Armenian genocide
in the US Congress.
Defining the events in 1915 as tragedy, Gul said, "Our offer is this:
if you are really so interested in this issue, why don’t we have a
committee composed of historians, we asked them – we open our archives
and let them study. But the Armenians are not forthcoming.
The same offer is valid for the American congressmen and the French."
NOMINATIONS OF CANDIDATES FOR RA DEPUTY TO START FROM FEBRUARY 26
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 23, NOYAN TAPAN. Nominations of candidates for RA
deputy for the forthcoming parliamentary elections will start on
February 26. The deadline of nominations is March 3, 18:00. The
documents on candidates’ nomination by proportional system will be
introduced to the Central Electoral Commission and by majoritarian
system to 41 district electoral commissions functioning in RA
territory, 13 out of which are in Yerevan. To recap, any person having
turned 25, being RA citizen in the past five years and permanently
residing in the country, having the right to vote can be elected as a
deputy. Members of Constitutional Court, judges, employees of RA
Police and National Security Services, tax, customs and prosecutor’s
office bodies cannot be registered as candidates for RA deputy.
Employees of state and local self-government bodies and officials can
be registered as a candidate for deputy in case of temporarily
resigning their commissions, with the exception of persons taking
political posts.
ARMENIAN GDP GROWS BY 11.9% IN JANUARY 2007 ON SAME MONTH OF LAST YEAR
Noyan Tapan
Feb 21 2007
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 21, NOYAN TAPAN. Armenia’s GDP grew by 11.9% in
January 2007 on the same month of last year and made 83 bln 771 mln
drams (about 238 mln USD). GDP index-deflator made 103%.
According to the RA National Statistical Service, industrial production
grew by 4% in Armenia in January 2007 on the same month of last year
and made 45 bln 38 mln drams. Industrial production with diamond
production grew by 7.7% to 44 bln 853 mln drams.
Gross agricultural output increased by 3.5% to 14 bln drams,
construction – by 2.4% to 3 bln 808 mln drams, retail trade – by 8.2%
to 47.9 bln drams, while the volume of services – by 8.9% to 33.4
bln drams.
In January 2007, Armenia’s foreign trade grew by 57.4% on January 2006
and made 260.3 mln USD, with exports growing by 24% to 59.5 mln USD
and imports – by 71% to 200.8 mln USD. Foreign trade without diamond
trade grew by 73.6% to 234.1 mln USD, with exports growing by 38%
to 46.8 mln USD and imports – by 85.6% to 185.3 mln USD.
Consumer prices increased by 5.1% in January 2007 on the same month
of 2006, the index of manufacturers’ prices made 98.3%.
Monetary incomes of the population inreased by 15.4% in January 2007
on last year and made 95 bln 80 mkn drams, monetary expenditures –
by 20.2% to 114.6 bln drams. The average monthly nominal salary made
69.145 thousand drams (28.8% growth), including salary of employees
of budgetary institutions amounting to 50.628 thousand drams (32.8%)
and salary of employees of non-budgetary institutions – 82.611 thousand
drams (24.8%). The average exchange rate of the US dollar made 363.71
drams in January 2007 and 416.04 drams in 2006.
The number of officially registered unemployed made 84.6 thousand in
Armenia at the end of January, declining by 4.4% compared with the
same index of last year.
PRE-ELECTION TERROR STARTED AGAINST NEWSPAPER "PAKAGITS", AGAPY HAYKAZUNI CONVINCED
Noyan Tapan
Feb 21 2007
YEREVAN, FERUARY 21, NOYAN TAPAN. Employees of the Department
on Compulsory Execution of Legal Acts on February 20 confiscated
property of the editorial office of the newspaper "Pakagits" owned
by AGAP-HRAT LLC. To recap, by the court decision of December 14,
2006, the company must pay 9.5 mln drams (about 27 thousand USD)
for occupying the office of the Democracy and Labor Party (DLP)
at 19 Khanjian Street since 2004.
The company director Agapi Haykazuni said during a press conference
on the same day that the company occupies this area following
the principle "a place for lobbying". In her words, all this is
a pre-election terror against the newspaper. "The daily tries to
inform the public about the property and criminal activity of the
prime minister. This is the reason why an attack was launched on
the newsapper," she said. According to her information, DLP chairman
Artak Melikian was promised to be included in the proportional list
of the Republican Party of Armenia – for silencing "Pakagits". Agapi
Haykazuni said that she has repeatedly received threats from some
RPA members whose names she refused to make public.
"Pakagits" will not close after the confiscation of its property. It
will proceed along the path it has chosen and issue even more critical
publications," A. Haykazuni stated.