Armenian Political News

Regrettably Andrew Dismore failed to get re-elected to the House of Commons.

His past work initiated the process that culminated in the introduction of the

UK National Holocaust Memorial Day.

He had promised to reintroduce a private member's bill to replace that which

fell away with the dissolution of the previous parliament.

He had requested assistance with his campaign from the London community

but only one person to our knowledge responded.

A potential opportunity missed.

A STEP BACKWARDS IN TURKISH-ARMENIAN RELATIONS
NAIRA MELKMYAN
Lexington Herald Leader
May 3 2010
Kentucky

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting YEREVAN, Armenia -- Armenian
President Serzh Sargsyan has halted the peace process with neighboring
Turkey, and accused Ankara of trying to insert fresh conditions into
an agreement that they reached last year.

"For a whole year, there has been no lack of high-ranking Turkish
officials expressing prior conditions in public speeches. For a
whole year, Turkey has done all it can to waste time, and to break
the process," he said.

"We want to keep the possibility of a normalization of our mutual
relations, since we want peace. Our political goal of a normalization
of Armenian-Turkish relations remains in force," he added.

But for now, the president has halted efforts to win parliamentary
approval of measures that would establish ties between the two
countries.

Analysts noted that Sargsyan made his comments on April 22, just two
days before the day on which Armenians around the world commemorate the
killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915. Armenians worldwide
have long been lobbying to have the deaths regarded as genocide,
a characterization hotly contested by Turkey.

While expressing their disappointment, both Russia and the United
States, which have been pushing both parties to normalize relations,
welcomed the fact that Sargsyan had not withdrawn from the process
entirely.

It's been two years since the leaders of the two countries first met
and began the process they hoped would eventually lead to the opening
of the borders between Armenia and Turkey and the establishment of
diplomatic relations.

But Armenia's policy of trying to secure international recognition of
the Ottoman killings as genocide continues to anger Turkey. Armenia,
on the other hand, is upset that Ankara is an ally of Azerbaijan,
Armenia's rival in the conflict over Nagorny Karabakh.

Analysts in Armenia said the president's statement merely reflected
the obvious.

"The process was frozen before," said Alexander Iskandaryan, director
of the Kavkaz Institute.

Turkey has yet to respond to the president's statement.

"We are evaluating the content of this statement and what it means"
legally and politically, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Burak
Ozugergin told Agence France-Presse.

But Yusuf Kanli a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News in Turkey,
blamed the lack of progress squarely on Armenia.

"Armenia's move to start the process of ratifying the protocols was
a cunning political move designed to corner Turkey," he said. "The
present decision of the Armenian coalition government to halt the
parliamentary ratification process is a political decision conceding
that the earlier move has failed."

Observers in Moscow said opposition parties probably forced the
Armenian president to halt parliamentary action.

"The problem is that in Armenia, restoring relations with Turkey
is not very popular," said Sergei Markov, a member of the Russian
parliament and a political analyst.

"Many people think that here Armenia is losing its honor, and that it
is effectively agreeing with the fact that Turkey does not recognize
the genocide in exchange for opening its borders."

ABOUT THE WRITER

Naira Melkmyan is a reporter in Armenia who writes for The Institute
for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains
journalists in areas of conflict. Readers may write to the author at
the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 48 Grays Inn Road, London
WC1X 8LT, U.K.; Web site: www.iwpr.net..

ERDOGAN: WE ACCEPT 'WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS' CONCEPT

BUT GIVES PRIORITY TO PEACE IN REGION
Yerkir
03.05.2010 13:34

Yerevan (Yerkir) - Turkey accepts the "without preconditions" concept
in the Armenia-Turkey normalization process, but gives priority to
peace in the region, which is impossible without the resolution of
the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has said in his address to the nation.

Commenting on his meeting with the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan
on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, Erdogan
said he informed the Armenian leader of Turkey's sincere efforts to
normalize the bilateral relations and expect Armenia to show similar
sincerity. Turkey clearly stated its expectations from Azerbaijan and
Armenia and underlined the importance of steps that would facilitate
the resolution of the conflict. However, the normalization process will
end in stalemate if the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict remains unsettled.

Commenting on Armenia's suspending the ratification process, he said
it is up to Armenia to decide. But Turkey has not changed its stance
aimed at settling the problem and remained committed to the letter
and spirit of the Protocols, Erdogan added.

TAKING OUT THE RUSSIAN BASE FROM ARMENIA IS A NONSENSE
Aysor
May 3 2010
Armenia

"Even if the Armenian - Turkish border will be open and the diplomatic
relations between the two countries will establish and Turkey becomes
the number one economic partner of Armenia, Armenia will need the
Russian base in any case," Turkologist Artak Shakaryan thinks. He
added that it is not profitable for both Armenia and Russia to take
out the Russian bases from the Armenian territory at least for the
first 15 - 20 years.

"Withdrawing the Russian bases from Armenia is nonsense, and is not
realistic," he said.

The other participant of the press conference Levon Shirinyan on his
turn noticed that the presence of the Russian base does not disturb
the Armenians in cooperating with NATO.

"The bases are being built based on mutual interests. The agreement
with Turkey allows demanding from our friends to be more active in
other issues," the speaker said.

VLADIMIR KAZIMIROV: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND THE

CONFLICT IN KARABAKH WITHOUT NAKHIJEVAN
ArmInfo
2010-05-05 11:19:00

ArmInfo. It is impossible to understand the conflict in Karabakh
without Nakhijevan, says Vladimir Kazimirov, the ex-co-chair of
the OSCE Minsk Group for settlement of the Karabakh conflict, in
an interview with Azerbaijani 3View News and Analytical Agency in
response to allegations by Araz Alizade, Chairman of the Social
Democratic Party of Azerbaijan.

"A series of conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis resulted in
delimitation, by force and through "soft" pressing. It is not easy to
overcome this. It requires time and cautiousness. Mass outcomes are
very rarely voluntary. One can hardy remember now how many Armenian
lived in Nakhijevan. Let's imagine that they want to return there
within shortest period of time. What will Baku say? It can say
demagogically "Welcome", but what it will actually mean?" Kazimirov
says. Casting doubt on Alizade's figures related "the refugees from
Karabakh," Kazimirov says that "it is one thing if the residents
of the entire Karabakh, and not only of the Nagorny Karabakh, are
in question, but it is quite another thing if it is the number of
refugees from Nagorny Karabakh. That is really out of sight!" The
former mediator recalled that the census of 1989 in Nagorny Karabakh
registered a little more than 40,000 Azerbaijanis

"If several thousands of them had already left Nagorny Karabakh then,
the number of Azerbaijanis could be hardly 45,000 in Nagorny Karabakh.

This figure could not grow to 227,000 over 10 years and reach 250,000
by present. Demography cannot develop so sharply," Kazimirov says.

"What's the good of recalling who and where lived centuries ago? No
one will return the US territory to Red Indians. No one will offer
Seljuks to return deep into Asia etc. "What has happened cannot be
undone even if the balance is negative, for instance, in the case of
the Crimea. One must reason from the given situation and not from
the past. It is better leaving wars in past centuries. I trust in
human intellect and ability to find a good way from any deadlock,"
Kazimirov says.

As regards propaganda, Kazmirov says "propaganda feeds peoples with
impurity and miasmas." "They in Azerbaijan often complain that the
world community does not display understanding and solidarity with the
victim of aggression, does not exert pressure on aggressor and does
not properly demand it to return the territories. But, many countries
and international organizations understand this complicate conflict
differently than you propagate. Not everything is so easy. The
conflict has prehistory. It was the other party that resorted to
force settlement and military actions. It was not an armed attack by
Armenians, it was a complex and multidimensional escalation of mutual
enmity. The right to self-defense is stipulated by the UN Statute
as a response by a country to an armed attack and not as replay
of war in 16 years," Kazimirov says. He recalls that the general
demand then was to cease the fire. "Who opposed that demand with
hope to defeat the rival? Who had been rejecting the 4 resolutions
of the UN Security Council for a year? Who had led everything to the
situation when it stopped accepting the resolutions on Karabakh? It
is only the UN Security Council that is empowered to define the act
of aggression like the threat to peace. Is there any UN Security
Council resolution that defines an aggression by Armenia? Occupation
that was the result of continuing military actions was registered but
classified as occupation by "local Armenian forces". Russia more than
any other country has directly told Yerevan that Armenia is also a
party to the conflict and not only Nagorny Karabakh. But Yerevan had
not been ready to perceive that for a long time," Kazimirov says. He
highlights that propaganda restraint is one of the key requirements
to the parties to the conflict in the way towards peace in the region.