Armenian News... A Topalian... Condemning military aggression of Azeerbaijan
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Statement of civil society organizations condemning military aggression of Azerbaijan against civilians and especially children living in the borderline communities of Armenia
September 27,2018
During the period of September 13-17, 2018 the armed forces of Azerbaijan started again the shooting of Armenian villages from large-scale weapons: Chinary, Baghanis, Koti, Vazashen, Voskevan, Berkaber, Aygehovit, Voskeparlocated in Tavush province and Arenivillage in Vayots Dzor province.
In Chinary village in the result of the shooting the local kindergarten was damaged, likewise its protective wall and households. In Koti village a senior civilian (Suren Sepkanian) was wounded, numerous households were damaged, the buildings of schools and kindergartens bear multiple marks of bullets. The video footage from Vazashen village reveals the fact that the shootings happened during the daytime when children were outside or were in schools and kindergartens. These acts point to the shootings targeted civilians and children in particular, with an aim to destroy them and cause an atmosphere of panic and horror.
Particularly, within the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, States Parties should respect the norms of International Humanitarian Law when armed conflict involve children. Moreover, not only children are specifically protected under the rules of International Humanitarian Law, but all seizure of, destruction or willful damage done to educational institutions is forbidden, and also subject to proper legal proceedings.
Noteworthy, Armenia in 2017 joined the Safe Schools Declaration that urges states to protect educational institutions from a military offense and the use of armed forces against them. Accordingly, Armenia, along with 81 other states signatories of the declaration, gives importance to the protection of children, students and teachers during armed conflicts and condemns any military actions against schools and educational facilities. It should be mentioned, that in May 2017, the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, and later the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflicts and the Human Rights High Commissioner urged all Member States to endorse the Safe Schools Declaration in their report to the United Nations Security Council on protection of civilians in armed conflict. Unfortunately, Azerbaijan has not joined the Safe Schools Declaration up until now, thus displaying its attitude towards the values adopted and protected by the international community.
We strongly condemn any acts of violence of armed forces towards civilian population and especially children and call international community to evaluate these violations and leverage legal means to demonstrate anti-humanistic nature of such policy. At the same time, we reinstate our commitment to work for the wellbeing of children and their safe life.
28 September 2018
3 Artsakh Soldiers Killed by Azeri Fire in a Week
Armenia Artsakh Featured Story Latest News Top Stories7 hours ago
In one week, three Artsakh soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani fire
STEPANAKERT—An Artsakh Army soldier, 19-year-old Aghassi Mkrtchyan, was killed Wednesday in a military outpost in Artsakh.
Artsakh presidential spokesperson David Babayan on Thursday confirmed that Mkrtchyan was killed as a result of Azerbaijani fire.
Artsakh President Bako Sahakian awarded Mkrtchyan posthumously with the Medal of Valor.
Mkrtchyan was the third soldier to be killed by Azerbaijani fire in the last week.
According to the Artsakh Defense Ministry, Defense Army Private Artsakh Hovsepyan (born in 1998) was killed from Azerbaijani fire on Friday. On Wednesday, Contract Serviceman Haykaz Matevosyan (born in 1980) died in the defense positions of one of the military units located in the northeastern direction of the Artsakh-Azerbaijan border.
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Ara Papian: The Prime Minister’s speech hit the right target point
19| September 27,2018
According to political analyst Ara Papian, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s speech at the UN General Assembly is a notable for several aspects.
“In my opinion, it was the first time that a parallel was drawn between Karabakh and Nakhichevan from that huge stage, noting that Azerbaijan is trying to turn Karabakh into Nakhichevan.”
In his speech, the prime minister said that Azerbaijan wants only this land, not people.
“Taking into account the fact that the genocide issue is delicate and sensitive, it hit the right target point,” says Ara Papian.
According to the political scientist, the former leaders did not make such a statement as they had chosen an easier option.
According to Ara Papian, Nikol Pashinyan’s speech will not have a significant impact on the conflict settlement.
“Finally, we have to admit that the Karabakh conflict is being discussed within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, the UN is much less familiar with such conflicts and does not deal with them.”
Pravda, Russia
Sept 28 2018
Putin in Azerbaijan: Israel will have to leave Moscow's sphere of influence
Russian President Vladimir Putin came to Baku to participate in the Russian-Azerbaijani interregional forum. Putin will also attend the final stage of the World Judo Championship. However, behind closed doors, Putin and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev also discussed topics of military-technical cooperation, the CSTO, as well as issues of the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
The Kremlin watched closely the recent visit of Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Azerbaijan. Lieberman promised to supply state-of-the-art air defense systems to Azerbaijan to build an echeloned defense system the border with Armenia. In addition, Azerbaijan will continue purchasing unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel, after they proved to be highly effective in the course of hostilities in the zone of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in April 2016.
Naturally, Moscow wants to seize the initiative from Israel, especially after the shutdown of the Ilyushin Il-20 aircraft over Syria. The Kremlin would not want Azerbaijan - a key country in Transcaucasia - to cooperate closely with Israel.
What can Russia offer in return?
President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, paid a visit to Russia in September of 2018. Aliyev then stated publicly that Azerbaijan had acquired weapons from Russia totalling $5 billion, and this number will grow. According to the Azerbaijani leader, Russia is "the world's most important producer and supplier of military products to international markets." Therefore, Azerbaijan will continue modernizing its army with Russia's help.
Is Azerbaijan going to become a full-fledged participant in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO)? However, Azerbaijan is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, which binds the country to maintain neutrality in foreign policy issues and refrain from joining any defense alliances.
Nevertheless, Azerbaijan may join the CSTO, if Putin allows Aliyev to carry out a quick military operation to regain control over five areas adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh (the five territories are currently occupied by Armenian troops).
Putin's reaction to this proposal is not known yet. A lot of things in this situation will depend on the policy of new Armenian leader Nikol Pashinyan. If he continues taking Armenia out of the orbit of Moscow's influence to build closer ties with the EU and NATO instead, Moscow will not be delighted with such a development.
The Armenian administration understands the prospect and tries to maintain friendly relations with Moscow, while making steps towards the European Union and NATO at the same time.
Meanwhile, Armenia is keeping an eye on Putin's visit to Azerbaijan and wants to know every single detail of the talks in Baku. From Baku, Putin is flying to Dushanbe for the summit of the CIS countries, where he may try to arrange the meeting between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, taking into consideration the fact that Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan have never met before.
In any case, Azerbaijan has not joined the Collective Security Treaty Organization yet. Interestingly, Azerbaijan's military aviation did not take part in military exercises of air defense forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States that kicked off on September 27. A report from the Russian Defence Ministry said that as many as 100 aircraft from seven CIS countries take part in the exercises: Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Azerbaijan is not among them.
RFE/RL Report
Armenian, Azeri FMs Hold ‘Useful’ Talks
September 27, 2018
Emil Danielyan
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in New York late on
Wednesday for fresh talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which official
Yerevan described as “useful.”
The three-hour talks between Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Elmar Mammadyarov began in the presence of the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group. The two ministers then had a one-on-one discussion.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry called the talks a “useful exchange of thoughts” on how to resolve the Karabakh conflict. “The interlocutors agreed to continue the dialogue, including within the framework of the co-chairs’ upcoming visit to the region,” it said in a statement.
Mammadyarov made similar comments on what was his second meeting with
Mnatsakanian in over two months. “It was an interesting and important exchange of views on continuing developments in the conflict’s resolution as well as about what needs to be done for establishing a lasting peace in the region,” the Azerbaijani news agency Trend quoted him as saying.
“We agreed to continue negotiations next month, including through the
co-chairs’ visit to the region,” added the Azerbaijani minister.
Speaking earlier on Wednesday, the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Tigran Balayan, reiterated the official Armenian line that major progress towards a Karabakh settlement requires an “atmosphere conducive to peace.” In that regard, Balayan pointed to Baku’s reluctance to implement confidence-building agreements that were reached by the leaders of the two warring nations in 2016.
Those agreements envisage specific safeguards against deadly ceasefire
violations along the “line of contact” around Karabakh and the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Tension on those frontlines seems to have somewhat increased in recent weeks. Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army reported that one of its soldiers, Aghasi Mkrtchian, was shot dead by Azerbaijani forces on Wednesday evening.
Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanian met in New York the day after Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian hit out at Azerbaijan in a speech delivered at a
session of the UN General Assembly.
Pashinian portrayed Baku’s refusal to directly negotiate with Karabakh’s ethnic
Armenian leader as further proof of its desire to “cleanse Armenians from
Karabakh.”
“How can Azerbaijan lay claim to Nagorno-Karabakh without even speaking to
Nagorno-Karabakh?” he said. “Is this possible? This is possible only if the
Azerbaijani government wants the territory but not its people.”
The Armenian leader also stated that the Karabakh dispute must be resolved
through “mutual concessions by all sides.” He did not elaborate.
Baku was quick to condemn Pashinian’s remarks. A top foreign policy aide to
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said they could torpedo the peace process.
Panorama, Armenia
Sept 28 2018
Armenian pastry chefs earn Guinness World Record for 6m long Gata
Armenian sweet bread or as it is commonly referred Gata was credited with a Guinness World Record on Friday. The giant pastry that was presented near Swan Lake in Yerevan was 6 meters long and weighed around 369kg. The event took place in the scope of “Yerevan 2800” celebrations dedicated to the 2780th anniversary of the foundation of the Armenian capital.
The feat was confirmed by a Guinness World Records officer Joanne Marie Brent who had arrived in Armenia for the occasion.
The Gata was prepared by a group of five pastry chefs led by Anahit Mikayelyan, representing Yeremyan Projects.
Financial Times, UK
Sept 28 2018
Quantum politics and a world turned upside down
As Armenia’s physicist president tests his theory, Trump intuitively grasps its implications
John Thornhill
The world laughed at Donald Trump this week. When the bombastic US president boasted at the UN of his achievements, he was greeted with a ripple of derision. But rather than sneering at Mr Trump, we should perhaps be studying him. He may be one of the first leaders to have grasped the essence of quantum politics.
That arresting phrase has been developed by another president, Armen Sarkissian of Armenia, to explain how politics now works. Mr Sarkissian has been studying this phenomenon in practice and in theory. Since being elected president in March, he has tried to calm political turmoil in Armenia. He is also one of the very few heads of state to be a theoretical physicist.
The 65-year-old was a winner of the Lenin prize for science back in Soviet times and a former colleague of the late Stephen Hawking at Cambridge university. For good measure, he was also one of the inventors of the Tetris computer game.
In his view, our interpretation of how politics traditionally works should be updated to reflect the way that physics has been reimagined. The classical world of post-Newtonian physics was linear, predictable, even deterministic. By contrast, the quantum world is highly uncertain and interconnected and can change depending on the position of the observer.“
A lot of things in our lives have quantum behaviour. We are living through a dynamic process of change,” he says. “I think we have to look at our world in a completely different way.”
Mr Sarkissian explains that the way that pandemics spread, with one case popping up in Hong Kong and then a second in Argentina, exhibits quantum characteristics. So do terrorist attacks, as an initial atrocity triggers unpredictable consequences around the world. Even the way we understand politics depends on who is viewing what and when — we all receive individualised newsfeeds on Facebook serving up different interpretations of events. The very act of observation changes our reality.
One doubts that Mr Trump has as good an understanding of quantum politics as Mr Sarkissian. But the US president seems intuitively to grasp its implications. In this new world, political parties, institutions, and reason-based processes appear less important than popular movements, beliefs, emotional connectivity, and social media impact. Mr Trump largely bypasses formal institutions and operates via Twitter, projecting his own version of reality to his 54.7m followers.
Recent events in Armenia are a good example of how quantum politics works in practice. Just weeks into Mr Sarkissian’s presidency, the Caucasian nation of 3m people was rocked by political crisis. Serzh Sargsyan, the former president, who had switched offices to become prime minister, was forced to resign after mass protests against his “power grab”.
Many of the demonstrators were what he calls “arbitrary soldiers” mobilised on Facebook, rather than members of an organised opposition. Armenia’s 10m-strong diaspora also influenced events from abroad by pitching into the social media maelstrom. “Armenia is a small state and a global nation,” Mr Sarkissian says. “Those living in California can see what is happening in their beloved country and react. This is another example of a new quantum quality.”
Although he has been testing his theory to explain these political dynamics, Mr Sarkissian is still searching for a solution as to how best to manage them. But, as you would expect from a scientist, he still strongly supports the force of reason, evidence and established truth. “You have to lead by your example and vision and ideas,” he says.
The concept of quantum politics is certainly intriguing. But not all are convinced it is valid. Jim Al-Khalili, physics professor at the University of Surrey, is sceptical of the parallels being drawn between quantum theory and modern politics. But he does agree with Mr Sarkissian that our world is becoming so hyper-complex that it is increasingly difficult to manage.
His preferred comparison is with chaos theory, which tries to detect underlying patterns in apparently random complex systems, such as weather or stock markets. “That is what we see in our really messy world,” he says.
One way to deal with hyper-complexity, as Mr Al-Khalili suggests, is to use artificial intelligence systems. AI can deal with complexity that humans struggle to get our heads around. The complex and chaotic patterns of this new world seem too difficult for us to recognise and interpret — hence the feelings of disorientation.
“There is nothing uniquely magical about humans,” says Mr Al-Khalili. “Ultimately if AIs know enough about us they will be able to make decisions for us without any of our irrational human biases.”
A robo-president, though, might not generate a lot of laughs at the UN.
