UPI.com -- Ankara is watching lawmakers in London as they get set to deliberate over a national day of remembrance for the deaths of Armenians during the Ottoman era.

Turkey pulled its ambassador to Sweden last week after Swedish lawmakers narrowly approved a resolution describing the killing of Armenians in World War I as genocide. The Turkish envoy to Washington was recalled when a similar measure narrowly passed March 4 in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

A measure is on its way to the British Parliament that if adopted would set aside an "Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day." British lawmakers are to review a draft of the measure this month.

RFE/RL -- Gagik Tsarukian, a wealthy businessman leading Armenia’s second largest governing party, on Monday lambasted and branded as incompetent a government minister who stated recently that the economic crisis in the country is over.

According to government statistics, the Armenian economy grew by 2.4 percent on the year in January after contracting by 14.4 percent in 2009. Trade and Economic Development Minister Nerses Yeritsian seized upon the figure to declare the end of a serious economic downturn that gripped the country more than a year ago.

“Nobody in the world is saying today that the economic crisis has ended, [what many are saying is] it’s possible that there will be a second phase of the economic crisis,” Tsarukian told journalists. “Even those states that have had economic growth … are not daring to say such a thing.”

Armenian Reporter, by Emil Sanamyan -- Silva Harotonian, an Iranian-Armenian IREX employee who has been sentenced to three years in prison over what her family calls a “tragic misunderstanding.”.

In a March 10 statement her employer the U.S.-funded International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) thanked "the Government of Armenia for their engagement in securing Silva's release." Details of that engagement have not been made public.

Ms. Harotonian, an Iranian citizen, was arrested on June 26, 2008, while on a business trip to Tehran for IREX's Maternal and Child Health Education and Exchange Program (MCHEEP). A Yerevan-based administrative officer for the program, launched in 2007, she was the only IREX staff member working in Iran at the time.

nationalgeographic -- Armenia has learned the hard way what it means for a country to lose its forests--and the huge backbreaking effort required to replant them. But in its struggle and determination to restore its trees, Armenia is an inspiration for the rest of the planet.

The endeavor to bring trees back to Armenia--a Massachusetts-size nation on the borders of Iran and Turkey--is thanks mostly to an initiative called the Armenia Tree Project, a program supported by the international conservation charity WWF and BMU/KfW, the German Development Bank.

The Armenia Tree Project has been raising and planting trees throughout the country for almost 16 years. Last year one million trees were planted, a record that brings the total of trees planted over the life of the project to about 3.5 million.

RFE/RL -- The United States has again criticized the Armenian authorities’ human rights record, saying that they have continued to stifle dissent, manipulate elections, tolerate police brutality and restrict judicial independence over the past year.

“Authorities restricted the right of citizens to freely change their government in [the May 2009] mayoral elections in Yerevan,” the U.S. State Department said late Thursday in an annual report scrutinizing human rights practices around the world.

“During the year authorities subjected citizens, particularly those considered by the government to be political opponents, to arbitrary arrest, detention, and imprisonment for their political activities; lengthy pretrial detention also continued to be a problem,” concludes the report.

“Authorities continued to use harassment and intrusive application of bureaucratic measures to intimidate and retaliate against political opponents. Authorities used force to disperse political demonstrations and constrain citizens seeking to publicize them. Police beat pretrial detainees and failed to provide due process in some cases.”

Huffington Post, by Stephen Zunes -- The Obama administration, citing its relations with Turkey, has pledged to block the passage in the full House of Representatives of a resolution passed this past Thursday by the Foreign Relations Committee acknowledging the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire of a 1.5 million Armenians. Even though the Obama administration previously refused to acknowledge and even worked to suppress well-documented evidence of recent war crimes by Israel, another key Middle Eastern ally, few believed that the administration would go as far as to effectively deny genocide.

Following the committee vote, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that “We are against this decision,” and pledged that the administration would "work very hard" to prevent the bill from coming to the floor. Despite widespread support for the resolution by House Democrats, she expressed confidence that the administration would find a means of blocking the resolution, saying, “Now we believe that the U.S. Congress will not take any decision on this subject."

Ibon Villelabeitia, Reuters -- Turkey recalled its ambassador to Sweden on Thursday and cancelled an upcoming summit between the countries after the Swedish parliament branded the World War One killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces genocide.

The move comes only a week after Ankara called home its ambassador to the United States because a U.S. congressional committee approved a similar resolution.

European Union member Sweden has been one of the strongest supporters of Ankara's bid to join the bloc, while the United States is generally considered a strong western ally of the NATO-member Turkey.

RFE/RL -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday invited President Serzh Sarkisian to visit Washington next month, in a telephone conversation that appears to have centered on Armenia’s stalled rapprochement with Turkey.

Sarkisian’s office said Clinton phoned the Armenian leader to invite him to an international summit on nuclear energy security that will take place in Washington in mid-April. It said she expressed hope that the two sides will use the occasion to “continue discussing issues on the bilateral, regional and international agenda.” It gave no further details.

The phone call came the day after Sarkisian suggested that Turkey will not unconditionally normalize relations with Armenia anytime soon and again threatened to annul the U.S.-brokered protocols signed by the two nations in October. Clinton similarly phoned Sarkisian in December just hours after he publicly voiced such a threat for the first time.

RFE/RL -- In what was his second visit abroad in less than two months, Former President Robert Kocharian met with his former French counterpart Jacques Chirac in Paris on Wednesday, his office confirmed the next day.

A spokesman for Kocharian, Victor Soghomonian, declined to divulge any details of the meeting. He told RFE/RL only that the ex-president is paying a “private visit” to France and will return to Armenia “in the coming days.”

The trip coincided with President Serzh Sarkisian’s official visit to Paris during which he held talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It is certain to stoke renewed speculation about Kocharian’s return to active politics.

By Vartan Oskanian -- Will Turkey’s current turmoil between Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdoğan and the country’s powerful army complicate and delay the country’s boldest initiatives in years – the moves to address decades-old tensions with both Armenians and Kurds?

Restructuring the role of Turkey’s army is vital, but if Turkey cannot follow through with the Armenian and Kurdish openings, the country’s own domestic situation, its relations with the two peoples, as well as tensions in the Caucasus, will undoubtedly worsen. Of the several flashpoints in the region, including that between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the tension between Armenians and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh is among the most challenging.

As to Georgia and Russia, the disproportionate size, weight, and power on one side are enough to deter any return to violence. Moreover, there are no entangling alliances complicating the matter. Georgia is not a NATO member, and the United States, it is clear, will not go to war with Russia over Georgia.