Monday 18 June 2012

Armenian News Sent by A Topalian

AP Planner June 15, 2012 Friday Azerbaijani and Armenian ministers discuss Karabakh conflict in Paris after clashes France: Foreign ministers from Azerbaijan and Armenia discuss their conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region following recent border fighting which reportedly claimed ten lives. Military skirmishes have continued between the two states since a ceasefire was signed in 1994 to end a six-year war over the predominantly ethnic Armenian region which voted to break away from Azerbaijan in 1988. The war is estimated to have left more than 30,000 people dead on both sides Paper: 69 thous. people emigrated from Armenia by plane for past 5 months June 16, 2012 - 19:46 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - According to Haykakan Zhamanak daily, about 69 thous. people emigrated from Armenia by plane over the past five months. The data are based on RA civil aviation general administration's publications. The number of those having left the country totaled 64 thous. in the same period last year. 50 thous. people emigrated from Armenia for the past 4 months, the number growing by 19 thous only in May, the paper says. APA, Azerbaijan June 15 2012 Great Britain FM: We support Azerbaijan's territorial integrity [ 15 Jun 2012 17:51 ] Baku. Victoria Dementieva - APA. Azerbaijani Embassy in Great Britain has sent a letter to British Foreign Office on information about holding of separatists of Nagorno Karabagh in the parliament of this country spread by Armenian media, said the press secretary of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Elman Abdullayev. According to him, along with this, the embassy held several meetings and stressed the inconvenience on participation of separatists at the meeting of Armenia-Britain friendship group. Great Britain's Foreign Ministry noted in their letter to Azerbaijani Embassy that, they supported Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. The letter says that, the parliamentary group is a non-formal group of interests and does not reflect the official position of British government and parliament: `This means that, Armenian media again distorts the facts. Their information is only sabotage'. As a result of researches of Azerbaijani Embassy in Great Britain, presence of Nagorno Karabagh separatists at the meeting of Armenia-Britain friendship group was the personal initiative of baroness Caroline Cocks. Note that, some of Armenian media spread information about visit of delegation of Nagorno Karabagh separatists to London. According to claim, the delegation held meetings in the House of Lords, participated in the annual meeting of Armenia-Britain friendship group. Azerbaijan FM gave task to Embassy to research this information. Washington Times June 14 2012 Embassy Row Diplomatic dispute reopened President Obama inevitably reopened a bedeviling dispute when he nominated a senior diplomat to serve as ambassador to Azerbaijan, which is locked in a deadly conflict with neighboring Armenia. Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas and a key player in the Great Game of energy politics in the Caucasus. But Armenia is rich in the politics of Washington, where the landlocked nation with no energy resources has powerful friends on Capitol Hill. Whenever a U.S. president nominates an ambassador to either country, the longstanding conflict between the nations dominates the questioning at Senate confirmation hearings. Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Jeanne Shaheed of New Hampshire quizzed Richard Morningstar when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week. The two senators, both Democrats who have a significant number of Armenian-Americans in their states, questioned Mr. Morningstar about Azerbaijan's relations with Armenia. Mr. Menendez noted that Azerbaijani President Ilam Aliyev recently warned that `our main enemies are the Armenians of the world.' Mr. Aliev added that `Armenians will live in fear' as long as they occupy an ethnic-Armenian enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas, which comprise about 20 percent of Azerbaijan. The two countries fought a six-year war over the territory that ended in 1994 after the death of about 4,600 people and the displacement of more than 1 million. Mr. Morningstar, who has dealt with U.S. interests in the region as a special envoy, called those comments `counterproductive.' However, he also said the United States has an interest in selling military equipment to Azerbaijan to help it defend against possible aggression from Iran, its southern neighbor. Mr. Menendez asked Mr. Morningstar about the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Turkish Empire during World War I. Armenian-Americans regularly pressure U.S. presidents to recognize the killings as the `Armenian Genocide,' but most U.S. leaders, including Mr. Obama, have called the massacre everything but `genocide' to avoid angering Turkey, a key NATO ally. `I have to ask you whether or not you contest any of the facts of what transpired in 1915, as it relates to 1.5 million Armenians who were brutally massacred and marched to their deaths in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire,' Mr. Menendez asked. `No, I do not,' Mr. Morningstar replied. Mr. Menendez helped block Mr. Obama's last choice for ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza, because he suspected the career diplomat had close personal ties to Mr. Aliyev and other Azerbaijani powerbrokers. Mr. Obama bypassed the Senate and named Mr. Bryza in a one-year recess appointment, which expired in January. Hetq Breaks Story: Police Promise to Investigate Missing Art from National Gallery hetq 11:03, June 1, 2012 Ararat Davtyan, Edik Baghdasaryan After Hetq first broke the story about art going missing from the National Gallery, the police promised to tell us why no one has ever been arrested or charged with the theft. The Police Department's Public Affairs Unit contacted us today, stating that an investigation into the matter and that it was likely that criminal charges would be forthcoming. We had also sent inquiries to the General Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Culture, the Prime Minister and Paravon Mirzoyan, who heads the National Gallery. All responded except Mirzoyan. The General Prosecutor replied by saying that the theft are registered with the police and that we should direct our questions to them. Deputy Minister of Culture Artour Poghosyan told us that it was true that certain items had gone missing from the National Gallery and that the administration had reported the cases to law enforcement. Sargis Grigoryan, who heads the Prime Minister's Control Service, told us that his unit had not carried out any inspections of the National Gallery during the period 2010-2011. In his reply, Grigoryan wrote that the Control Service had taken color photos of 29,906 objects at the National Gallery in July, 2009. He went on to say that as of last month, some 16,000 of these had been inputted into the digital data base. Hetq had also written about a flood that took place in the National Gallery's 9th floor cafe that destroyed several paintings below. And the reason for the water damage in the first place? The answer, sadly, is typically Armenian. The day of the flood, a film crew had been shooting in the Gallery. Afterwards, there was a party upstairs in the cafe. Somebody forgot to turn off the water faucet. In October of 2011 a Hetq reporter conducted an interview with Paravon Mirzoyan about a case involving two works by the artist Khachatur Yesayan. The reporter also wanted to verify the news about the fold and subsequent water damage. Mirzoyan confirmed that a work entitled `Destroyers of Birds Nests', in the French exhibition hall had sustained water damage but refused to go into details. He did reject any allegation that a film had been shot at the National Gallery. The following video is the trailer for the film "Here". The scenes shown from the 32-38 second are of the 9th floor cafe in the National Gallery.

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