Author: Vicken Chmshkian

Azerbaijani press: Armenia returns to negotiations because of int’l pressure: Azerbaijani MP

Vicken Chmshkian
21:06 (UTC+04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 16

By Ilhama Isabalayeva – Trend:

Armenia once again returned to negotiations table as a result of international pressure, Azerbaijani MP Asim Mollazade told Trend Oct. 16 commenting on the Geneva meeting of presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan.

“Azerbaijan wants peace. However, Armenia is not ready for peace and will not take any serious steps. Armenia will break this process at the most important moment,” noted the MP.

President Aliyev and President Sargsyan held a summit in Geneva, Switzerland on Oct. 16. Foreign ministers, Elmar Mammadyarov and Edward Nalbandian also attended the meeting, which was organized under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.

Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk also participated in the summit.

A joint statement by the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia and the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group following the Geneva meeting of the two presidents says that the meeting took place in a constructive atmosphere.

The presidents agreed to take measures to intensify the negotiation process over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict’s settlement and to take additional steps to reduce tensions on the line of contact between the two countries’ troops, reads a joint statement by the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia and the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group following the Geneva meeting.

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.

Hitman fatally wounds businessman, head of Armenian community in Voronezh, downtown Moscow

Vicken Chmshkian
Crime Russia
Oct 5 2017
Arsen Papazyan

Arsen Papazyan, a member of the Public Chamber of the Voronezh region and chairman of the Armenian cultural and Christian public organization Ani was shot today at 3.30PM on Myasnitskaya Street near the building where he had lived.

According to RBC sources in Moscow office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, someone shot Papazyan about four times. Meanwhile, according to the concierge of the building nearby, a machine gun was used. She added that he knew Papazyan, since he had three apartments in the building, where he had lived with his wife and children.

The 46-year-old businessman was taken to Pirogov’s First City Hospital with two penetrating wounds.

Born in Yerevan, Papazyan had lived in Voronezh since 1998. He was involved in a scandal in 2006, when the Voronezh office for the Federal Migration Service (FMS) denied him the permit for temporary residence in Russia. According to the Service, the reason was that he had reported "knowingly false information" about himself in state bodies. Meanwhile, the businessman and by that time already chairman of the Committee on Nationalities Affairs of the local public chamber claimed that it was a revenge of the authorities for his protecting national minorities from police harassment.

Apart from his social activities, Papazyan was also actively involved in business: he owned a cafe, an entertainment complex and an asphalt-laying firm.

The businessman is also known to have lived and worked in Ukraine’s Kharkov for some time.

The Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case on attempted murder. According to sources, a contract killing is the primary version.

Interestingly, another Armenian diaspora head was almost killed in the same neighboring country at the beginning of the week. The attempted murder of Artashes Sargsyan in Zaporozhye could be related to the fact that he is considered the leader of an organized criminal group. The hitman wounded his bodyguard.

Barzani should tell the truth: This is about secession

Vicken Chmshkian
Arab News, Saudi Arabia
Oct 1 2017


Barzani should tell the truth: This is about secession 

Amir Taheri 

The Iraqi Kurdistan referendum is a fait accompli. It must be taken into account in shaping future developments, and Masoud Barzani, the man who orchestrated it, must be as pleased as Punch.
 In contemplating the future, it is important to know exactly what we are talking about. Supporters of the referendum have pinned their flag to two concepts: Independence and self-determination.
 They say Iraqi Kurds want independence. However, like all other Iraqis, they already live in a country that is recognized as independent and is a full member of the UN.
 The concept of the quest for independence applies to lands that are part of a foreign empire or the “possession” of a colonial power. Legally speaking, at least since 1932, that has not been the case in Iraq.
 Self-determination is recognized as a right under international law. It was first developed after the First World War and the break-up of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The idea was that people in the component parts of those empires should determine their own future, especially by deciding whether or not to form states of their own.
 After the Second World War, the concept was used to provide a legal framework for decolonization as British, French and Dutch empires broke up. In the past 100 years, thanks to the concept of self-determination, over 120 new independent countries have appeared on the map.
 Self-determination was established as the right of all peoples to choose their own governments and pass their own laws rather than be subject to distant foreign rulers and lawmakers. So Iraqi Kurds already enjoy self-determination because they choose their own local and national governments and lawmakers.
 The suggestion that the Kurdish referendum was about independence and self-determination is bogus, to say the least. Trying to hoodwink public opinion can lead to dangerous complications in the future.
 So what was the referendum really about? It was about secession, which is not the same thing as self-determination or independence. Its organizers want to detach the areas where Kurds form a majority and set up a new state.
However, while self-determination is universally recognized as a right, secession is not. It is an option, not a right. At best, it may be regarded as a desire, at worst, a folly.
 Also, it has little to do with the degree of democratic development of societies. The UK is a well-established democracy but still faces secessionism from many Scots. There are secessionists in several other democracies; Quebecois in Canada, Corsicans in France, Basques and Catalans in Spain, Frisians in Denmark, Kashmiris in India and even Porto Allergens in Brazil.
The important thing is that, in all those cases, parties that support secession say so openly, seldom trying to disguise their ambition as a quest for self-determination and independence. So the first thing Barzani should do is to call a spade a spade, and openly admit that what he is seeking is secession. He should say that his aim is to break up Iraq, a multi-ethnic republic, to create a mono-ethnic Kurdish state.

Self-determination was not the issue in the Kurdish referendum, and any attempt by the Kurds’ leader at a unilateral Declaration of Independence will not end well.

Amir Taheri

Interestingly, the word Iraq, which means “lowland,” is a geographic term with no ethnic connotations. Iraqi citizenship is a civic concept, transcending ethnic, religious and racial identities. Many countries in the world are named after their majority ethnic component. Turkey is the land of the Turks and Armenia the land of Armenians. All the “stan” countries refer to ethnic majorities there. Beyond the Middle East, all but 12 of the European states are also named after ethnic components: Germany is the land of Germans and Russia the land of Russians.
 However, none of the Middle Eastern countries that emerged from the break-up of the Ottoman Empire are labeled with ethnic identities. They have historic or geographic names and regard the presence of various ethnic or religious communities within their borders as a given. Even Israel, though a special case for obvious reasons, fits into that pattern if only because 27 percent of its citizens are not Jews. They are Israelis but not Israelites.
 The Middle East has been the sphere of multi-ethnic empires for about 25 centuries: Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman, Byzantines, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottomans etc. The Kurdish state that Barzani wishes to create would be the first in 2,000 years in the Middle East to claim a purely ethnic identity.
 The international community recognizes the outcome of secession only if it is achieved with the consent of the country concerned. Montenegro seceded from Serbia through negotiations and was admitted into the UN. Kosovo also seceded but without consent and is still in limbo, rejected by the UN and recognized by only a handful of nations.
 A referendum does not automatically bestow legitimacy on secession. Russia held them in Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine, and in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which it took from Georgia. No other country recognizes those secessions.
The reason is that there is no legal mechanism to recognize non-consensual secession. The International Court of Justice at The Hague made that clear by refusing to certify Kosovo’s independence. In Canada, the High Court has ruled against Quebec secession and in France Corsican secessionist demands have been thrown out by courts. In Iraq, the constitution, drafted with the full and enthusiastic participation of Barzani, excludes unilateral secession.
 Finally, secession does not feature in the programs of any of the dozen or so parties active among Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan. So the next step Barzani must take is to enshrine secession in his party’s charter and manifesto for the next Iraqi general election in 2018. If he does that and obtains a mandate to seek secession, he could then demand that the central government in Baghdad enter into negotiations on the issue.
 In other words, any attempt at a unilateral declaration of independence could lead only to impasse, a deadly impasse.
• Amir Taheri was executive editor in chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at, or written for, innumerable publications and published 11 books.

— Originally published in Asharq Al-Awsat.