“Zhoghovurd” is disappointed with U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision not to recognize the Armenian genocide in his upcoming April 24 message. The paper believes that Obama missed his last chance to fulfill a campaign promise given to the Armenian Americans in 2008. But it says a formal recognition of the genocide by the U.S. federal government is only “a matter of time.” “This is no doubt a disappointment for us,” it says. “But if we try to look at the matter from the standpoint of realpolitik, we will have to admit that America’s use of the term genocide at this point could have had unpredictable consequences for Armenia. After all we will be doomed to live in the bloody neighborhood of Turkey and Azerbaijan on April 25 and afterwards.”
“Zhamanak” speculates that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s April 24 trip to Yerevan is “agreed with Turkey” and aimed at reviving the Turkish-Armenian protocols signed in 2009 and thereby halting the process of international recognition of the Armenian genocide. “Thus Armenia will again become on April 24 an object of Russian-Turkish deals, as was the case a century ago,” alleges the paper. “A century ago such deals ended in an unspeakable tragedy: the loss of Armenian statehood. What the deals planned now will lead to is difficult to tell.”
“In a sense, the centennial of the Armenian genocide has integrated Armenia into the world and made it part of the international community, from which our country had been drifting away,” writes “168 Zham.” “That will certainly have an extremely positive influence on the process of international recognition of the genocide. But April 24 will come and go and Armenia will be left with the problems and challenged that have been relegated, perhaps objectively, to the background by the centenary events.” The paper wonders whether Armenia will manage to use the current international spotlight to overcome those challenges and “become a full-fledged member of the contemporary family of nations.”
“Haykakan Zhamanak” reports that the sale of Armenia’s Vorotan cascade of hydroelectric plants to a U.S. energy firm, ContourGlobal, remains stalled. The Armenian government on Wednesday made fresh changes in key terms of the $250 million deal that was first announced more than a year ago. The paper claims that Vorotan’s sale is being delayed because it involves a Western, rather than Russian, firm.
(Tigran Avetisian)