Gracefully bridging cultural differences through dance
By JOYCE RUDOLPH
Glendale News Press
LATimes.com
Sept 11 2004
GLENDALE – Anna Djanbazian wants to share the beauty of her Armenian
culture with others, especially young people, in hopes that it brings
harmony to the whole community.
That’s the purpose of her newly formed Djanbazian Foundation, which
is sponsoring the Los Angeles premiere of her contemporary ballet
based on the life of Armenian musical figure Komitas, who lived from
1869 to 1935.
He was a priest as well as a composer, conductor and teacher,
Djanbazian said. He collected and notated more than 4,000 traditional
songs and instrumental works. Following the Armenian Genocide in 1915,
he suffered a mental breakdown and stopped archiving his work and
few examples of it remain, she added.
Djanbazian has choreo- graphed dances to 20 of his works. The ballet,
in two acts with three scenes in each, will be performed by more than
25 of her company’s dancers. Two other guest artists performing are
Arsen Serobian, who will portray Komitas, and David Hovhannisyan,
who will dance several other parts in the ballet.
In the dances, Djanbazian is portraying the artist as a human being,
she said.
“Everybody knows he was a priest, he was a very saintly man, [but]
at same time, he was a human being and artist, who tried to separate
foreign melodies from the basic Armenian music,” she said.
In some scenes, Djanbazian shows the artist as he was creating the
melodies and the melodies are dancing around him.
“Komitas lived for his people,” she said. “So, in the second act,
you see more of what happened to his people and how he was affected
by the (tragic things) that happened to these people.”
Following the genocide, she said, Komitas separated himself from his
real life and was committed to an asylum for many years.
“But, people got stronger and stood on their feet because of his work,”
she added.
Djanbazian believes that by presenting history through dance and music,
it will help break down the barriers between the different cultures
in Glendale, especially among the youth.
“We are all living together everyday, why not get involved in each
other’s culture,” she said. “We will respect each other and live
together calmer and with respect.”
Djanbazian is continuing the 62-year dance academy tradition started
by her father Sarkis Djanbazian who was a ballet master in Russia.
She came to the United States from Iran in 1984 and began the
Djanbazian Dance Company in 2002.
“Komitas – Krung Bnaver (Banished – but not forgotten),” continues
at 8 tonight and 5 p.m. Sunday at the Glendale Community College
Theatre, 1500 N. Verdugo Road, Glendale. Artist and historian Arto
Tchakmakchian will present an optional pre-show lecture on Komitas’
life at 7:15 tonight and 4:15 p.m. Sunday. Tickets range from $20 to
$40. For reservations, call 580-2170.

Azerbaijan Awaits Positive Results from Astana Summit
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 11 2004
Defense Minister, Colonel General Safar Abiyev received Russian
Ambassador to Azerbaijan Nikolay Ryabov on completion of his diplomatic
mission in the country on Friday.
Assa-Irada — General Abiyev noted that the Azerbaijani people expect
the meeting to be held between Azerbaijani and Russian presidents
Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin within the Astana summit of CIS
countries to yield positive results and affect the settlement of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh.
Unveiling his stance towards the issue, Ambassador Ryabov stressed that
it is necessary to intensify talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia. He
wished the Russian-Azerbaijan military cooperation to develop in the
name of the two countries’ national interests.

Group of Parliament Members Not To Attend Session Tomorrow
Baku Today
12 Sep 2004
12/09/2004 20:48
Executive Power of Baku replied to demand letter of Popular Front
party of Whole Azerbaijan claiming to hold picket protesting visit of
Armenian officers to attend “Cooperative Best Effort” NATO trainings
in Baku.
The response was positive with corrections. City hall gave permission
to hold the picket in front of Khatai cultural center, nearby Khatai
subway station instead of Narimanov cinema theatre shown in the letter.
Action will take start at noon on September 12. Party chairman Gudrat
Hasanguliyev informed ANS group of parliament members will not attend
parliament session in protest against visit of Armenian officers.
They are Gudrat Hasanguliyev, Alimammad Nuriyev, Rufat Agalarov and
Mais Safarli. The list might increase as talks with other parliament
member are underway.

Opposition Party Pickets British Embassy
Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 11 2004
The Whole Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (WAPFP) picketed the British
embassy in Baku on Friday in protest against the planned participation
ofrmenian officers in NATO exercises to be held in Baku in September
within the Partnership for Peace program.
Assa-Irada — Some 100 party members showed placards “Death to
Armenian criminals!” and “Armenian criminals be brought to military
court!” during the protest action, a source from the party said.
The petition of the protest action was forwarded to the embassy.
During the clash with police 8 protesters were detained and taken to
the Sabayil district police precinct. The detainees were released an
hour and a half later.
The WAPFP is scheduled to hold a rally outside the Khatai cultural
center on Sunday with the similar purpose.

Los Anglese Times
Sept 12 2004
In Caucasus, Frozen Conflicts Are Still Hot
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
Disputes stoked after the Soviet breakup wreak misery and
instability years later.
GIZEL, Russia – Each day for 12 years, the rhythm of life in this
village of scrap-metal lean-tos, plywood shacks and misery in North
Ossetia has been the same.
Those who have jobs in the nearest city hike up to the main road
and flag down a passing car or, with luck, catch a bus. Later in the
morning, the children set out for school, walking a mile and a half
along roads that are often muddy or buried in snow. At 5 p.m. sharp,
the water tap in the center of town opens up for precisely three hours.
There is a reason why no bus stops at Gizel, why there is no school
or running water and two outhouses must do for 300 people: Gizel
is a “temporary” place, set up in this Russian republic in 1992 to
accommodate some of the 100,000 refugees fleeing South Ossetia’s
separatist war against Georgia.
Somehow, the war never officially ended, and many of the refugees
never went home. In addition, brief clashes have flared again over
the last few weeks, and officials here say a revival of the fighting
is their worst fear.
Across the territory of the former Soviet Union, as many as 1 million
people are living in the forgotten limbos of frozen ethnic and
territorial conflicts, some so obscure that most of the world isn’t
aware of them, and so deeply hostile that they may never be resolved.
Nowhere are these frozen conflicts as volatile as here in the North
Caucasus, where ethnic battles that erupted after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991 could ignite again at the slightest provocation.
Here in North Ossetia, the horrific hostage-taking at a provincial
school in the town of Beslan resurrected in many minds another conflict
from 1992, with the neighboring Russian republic of Ingushetia, that
killed 200 people and displaced thousands. The Beslan hostage-takers,
a combination of Chechen and other rebels, were reportedly led by a
well-known Ingush militant.
No sooner had the hostages been taken than some Ossetians began
pulling weapons out of their closets, determined to strike against
Ingush villages in North Ossetia.
“Me and my friends had a plan. We wanted to go to an Ingush village
… and we were going to capture two schools there,” said one man,
a veteran of the Ingush-Ossetian war. “But in the end, we realized
those were such evil terrorists that even if we had their schools,
we could never break them.”
For those seeking to undermine what remains of the Russian empire,
the North Caucasus is the chosen field of battle, thanks in part to
the constant threat of instability in this highly strategic region.
One of the hostage-takers captured in Beslan said that the real aim of
the school seizure was not simply to free the neighboring province of
Chechnya from Russian rule, but to “start war in the entire territory
of the North Caucasus.”
Frozen conflicts plague the region. In South Ossetia, officially part
of Georgia but seeking to join Russia, periodic mortar attacks and
small-arms skirmishes claimed several dozen lives over the summer
as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili moved to end the de facto
autonomy there and in the Black Sea republic of Abkhazia.
The conflict over Azerbaijan’s Armenian-majority enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh is no closer to resolution than it was when
the heaviest fighting ended 10 years ago. And in Moldova, the
self-proclaimed but otherwise unrecognized republic of Trans-Dniester
has seen deliberate electricity shut-offs and a rail blockade after
increased tension over language issues.
The world may tune out the conflicts in these hard-to-pronounce areas,
but analysts warn that it does so at its peril: The conflict belt runs
along the vital energy corridor linking Caspian Sea oil supplies with
Western Europe and the United States.
Moreover, the self-declared independent zones – answering to no
recognized governments – are potential breeding grounds for problems
that can spill well beyond their borders, experts warn.
Abkhazia, which Saakashvili has sworn to bring back under Georgian
rule, was the site of the reported disappearance of more than a pound
of highly enriched uranium sometime after fighting broke out in 1992.
On at least two other occasions, Georgian officials have found stolen
radioactive material they believed was bound for a port in Adzharia,
a third breakaway region that Georgia retook in May.
“It is widely and correctly believed that these unresolved fragments of
the Soviet empire now serve as shipment points for weapons, narcotics
and victims of trafficking, and as breeding grounds for transnational
organized crime – and, last but not least, for terrorism,” said
a report produced by the German Marshall Fund and the Project on
Transitional Democracies.
The recent fighting in South Ossetia appears to have been triggered
by the Georgian government’s attempt to crack down on the huge
smugglers’ market on the border with Russia. Georgia says it is
determined to collect taxes on the rampant shipments of cheap vodka
and other smuggled goods that routinely flow out of South Ossetia,
but leaders there say the market closure was the first step in an
attempted economic blockade.
“The Georgian side is not fulfilling its agreement, because it took
up an obligation to invest certain means to restore the destroyed
economy of South Ossetia, and it has done nothing,” South Ossetian
President Eduard Kokoity said in an interview.
Under the Soviets, Ossetia was split between Georgia and Russia,
in large part because of geography: The north and south are divided
by the high, forbidding peaks of the Caucasus range, whose passes
were historically closed up to six months of winter. Today, about 95%
of South Ossetians hold Russian passports, and Russian border guards
and peacekeeping troops patrol the frontier.
The specter of Russia looms over many of the frozen conflicts along
the belt of the Black Sea and the Caucasus. All lie in Russia’s
“near abroad,” the geopolitical zone around which Moscow has drawn
a line in the sand against U.S. diplomacy.
Georgian President Saakashvili has accused Russia of supplying missiles
to its peacekeepers in South Ossetia and engaging in a military
buildup on its borders. But Moscow has spoken in favor of a negotiated
settlement, and of maintaining Georgia’s territorial integrity.
“There are no fools in the Russian leadership who want an international
war on their hands right now,” said Sergei Mikheyev of the Center
for Political Technologies in Moscow. “Russia would be happy to
mediate a settlement in which Georgia becomes a federalized country
and incorporates South Ossetia and Abkhazia as autonomous units,
but at this point it seems impossible to make all three sides see
that this is the only nonviolent way out of the situation.”
Kokoity, a former wrestling champion, said that South Ossetia had
the same right of self-determination that Georgia exercised when it
withdrew from the Soviet Union in 1991, taking South Ossetia with it.
During the war that broke out in South Ossetia in 1991, 1,000 people
died and more than 112 Ossetian villages were destroyed.
“I had a house, a beautiful, three-story house. But it was destroyed,
and I never got any compensation,” said Tusya Galoyeva, a 64-year-old
native of the South Ossetian village of Gory, who fled to Gizel during
the war.
Before the war, Gizel was an unfinished recreational center for a
collective farm; many of the rooms in its half-done concrete buildings
are open to the summer air. Buckets stand on the floors to catch rain
dripping through makeshift roofs, and most units have several families
crowded inside, sleeping dormitory fashion and sharing kitchens.
“You have a lot of people living really in some of the worst conditions
I have ever seen, certainly the worst conditions in Europe,” said
William Tall, head of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office
in the North Caucasus.
“The conflict has been going on for so long, and we’re not getting
anything. We’ve been living in indignation for years,” said resident
Zemfira Laliyeva, whose relatives have all returned to South Ossetia.
She has not, mostly because she lived in a predominantly Georgian
village, and fears her neighbors.
“My husband’s brother returned, and look what’s happening there
now,” she said, referring to the clashes. “He’s spending nights in
the forest!
“Not only that,” she added, “but our house was not rebuilt. Where
can I return to?”
In settlement talks, Ossetian refugees have demanded restitution
from Georgia. Now Saakashvili has been offering some benefits and the
possibility that displaced South Ossetians could take over their lost
homes from those living in them now.
But most here regard the idea of integrating South Ossetia into
Georgia as a pipe dream; Kokoity rejects even the widely discussed
proposal of offering South Ossetia broad autonomy in a Georgian state.
“This will never happen, and I can claim this with complete
confidence,” he said flatly. “What state do they think they are
inviting us into? Georgia is a failed state. Let’s operate with the
facts: In Georgia, three presidents were elected…. None of the Georgian
presidents finished his term in accordance with the constitution –
they were all removed with coups, or ‘rose revolutions,’ or whatever.”
Saakashvili, who was elected after longtime Georgian President Eduard
A. Shevardnadze was ousted in a popular uprising, has insisted that his
aim is unification of a democratic state within its internationally
recognized borders. Russia’s encouragement of separatists in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia can lead to dangerous consequences, he warned
in an interview this month with the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
“If they denounce separatist support in Chechnya while advising it in
Georgia, they simply do not understand what this war can become,” he
said. “It would have consequences far more serious than the conflicts
of the early 1990s. The region has more weapons, the fighters can
organize themselves more efficiently; they are more experienced,
more disciplined. It will turn into a long-term conflict.”

Torigian’s legacy evident throughout city
By Chris Stevens
The Daily Item of Lynn, MA
Sept 13 2004
When former Mayor Peter Torigian left office in 2002 he took with
him more than 100 plaques, 44 shovels, a few trowels, a handsaw and
a putter, each of which represent a different groundbreaking event
from his 23 years as mayor.
Chronologically, those shovels represent how a city dotted with
leather tanneries grew into a major high-tech and retail hub.
“He came in when things started to change,” said Mayor Michael Bonfanti
of Torigian’s legacy. “The city was moving from the leather industry
to modern, new business. Peter was aware of that and had the vision
to direct it.”
In his tenure, Torigian established the Centennial Industrial Park,
grew the North Shore Shopping Center and helped build new schools. He
also helped residents refurbish their homes through grants and brought
financial solvency to a struggling city.Until a few months ago,
Torigian was helping to raise money for the new YMCA.
Rep. John Tierney (D-Salem) said he admired Torigian for his grit.
“He would make up his mind on an issue and have the fortitude to stay
with it,” he said. “He would always listen to people and could be
courageous enough to change his mind but he wouldn’t be intimidated
by other politicians or people.”
Just a few blocks down from the cold-water, triple-decker where he
was raised, Torigian built what many believe to be the jewel of the
community, the Community Life Center, that was renamed for him the
year he retired.
In 1985, Torigian established a Capital Improvement Program and oversaw
$33.1 million worth capital projects which he said at the time “did
not cost taxpayers 10 cents.”
His favorites of those projects included the renovations of the public
library and the 1873 Fire Station.
Torigian was also proud of the city’s stabilization fund. Despite
strong criticism, Torigian refused to allow city officials draw down
the fund and when he retired, it had grown to $4.1 million. As other
communities struggled with budget constraints, Peabody enjoyed years
of fiscal stability.
Along with establishing a strong business foundation for the city,
Torigian spearheaded many projects and programs, including Brooksby
Farm, The Meadow at Peabody Golf Course, the summer concert series
and the Pride in Peabody awards.
He also began an educational program where every third grader in the
city went through the George Peabody Museum and heard the story of
the city’s founder, thus assuring they knew their community’s history.
Proud of his Armenian heritage, Torigian established a flag raising
each year, marking the anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
Tierney said one of Torigian’s strongest points was not only
recognizing the cultural diversity in his city, but also celebrating
it.
“With little fanfare he started the International Festival, which
sent a message to everyone that cultural diversity was a part of the
city and intolerance would not be accepted,” the congressman said.
“He had such a great love for this city he made his job look easy
at times,” said City Councilor Judy Selesnick. “He leaves behind a
wonderful legacy, unfortunately it could have been more.”

Exhibit puts lens on L.A. Armenians
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Sept 12 2004
GLENDALE — Artist Ara Oshagan has spent four years photographing
Armenians throughout Los Angeles in a quest to answer the question,
What does it mean to be an Armenian?
“Where does the Armenian stop and the non-Armenian begin? What
are those boundaries?” said Oshagan, 39, whose day job is as a
computational physicist. “We’re using Armenians to try and address
universal issues of identity for all immigrant communities.”
“Traces of Identity: An Insider’s View into the L.A. Armenian
Community,” features 40 black-and-white photographs exploring identity
through religion, family, society and politics.
Oshagan’s photographs capture scenes in everyday life — a family
retreat at Big Bear Lake, inmates at Ironwood State Prison, church
services in Pasadena, demonstrations on east Hollywood streets, a
party in Studio City, a drug rehabilitation center in Palmdale and
a convalescent home in Eagle Rock.
“Ara moved beyond stereotypes of Armenians and really was able to get
inside the variety of different expressions of Armenian identity,”
said Donald Miller, a professor of religion and executive director of
the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern
California. The center sponsored the exhibit. The documentary exhibit
is partially funded by grants from the California Council for the
Humanities and the George Ignatius Foundation.
“On one level he shows Armenians living the good life with extended
family by a swimming pool, but at the other extreme there are
photographs of Armenians in jail. That’s a long ways from the
stereotype of the good life by the pool,” Miller said.
The identity of immigrant groups is constantly being challenged, and
the photographs show that there are multiple identities of Armenians,
he said.
“I hope what will happen is people will see the complexity of the
Armenian community, that there’s not one identity, not one social
class, and they’ll walk away from the exhibit with a sense of the
contribution that Armenians are making to this rich mosaic of Southern
California,” Miller said.
Exhibit curator Charlie Hachadourian said Oshagan has created a
literary narrative with his work.
“Everything is about the relationships Ara creates with the people he
photographs, and in that tension he shares with his subjects is the
ever evolving identity of Armenians in Los Angeles,” Hachadourian
said. “Ara is constantly asking how we delineate our identities
as Armenians and how we perpetually reinvent ourselves as a unique
component of a multifaceted and vast whole.”
Oshagan, who comes from a long line of Armenian writers, said the
answer to what being Armenian means is at the hands of each viewer.
His own conclusion is that identity constantly evolves.
“The lines between the subcommunity and the larger community are
getting blurred all the time,” said the Glendale resident. “For
each viewer there can either be an answer or there could be more
questions. It’s an interaction between the audience and the work. I’m
posing the question.”
Naush Boghossian, (818) 546-3306 [email protected]
IF YOU GO The exhibit runs from Sept. 24 through Dec. 31 at the
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park, 4800
Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. To see Ara Oshagan’s photographs,
visit

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
Sept 13 2004
RUSSIA INTERESTED IN PEACE IN THE CAUCASUS
[September 13, 2004, 14:58:35]
It was told by the first deputy chief of the Staff on Coordination of
Military Cooperation of the CIS Ivan Babichev in his interview to
correspondent of AzerTAj, speaking on the military cooperation of the
member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which is
carried out both on bilateral, and on multilateral basis. As he said,
the states of Commonwealth make a decision in what format to
cooperate with other countries of CIS, while the Staff on
coordination of military cooperation of the CIS states coordinates
the efforts of the states in this field.
I. Babichev also informed that Azerbaijan is not the participant of
the Organization of the Agreement on Collective Safety however, there
are common problems for all space of the CIS from which it is
impossible to remain aside. In particular, it is a common system of
air defense, which interests all states, and this is creation of
common system of communications, system of radiating chemical safety
for settlement of environmental problems and a number of others,
concerning all state of Commonwealth. “Though Azerbaijan also does
not enter this Agreement, nevertheless, and it participates in work
of development of common systems”, Ivan Babichev has told.
Answering the question on the position of Azerbaijan on non-alignment
to this Agreement and how is estimated it in the Staff on
Coordination of Military Cooperation of the CIS, that this military
block includes Armenia, the state conflicting with Azerbaijan
occupying a part of the Azerbaijan territories, I. Babichev has
stated that Russia stands on the position that any conflicts on space
of Commonwealth were not, and does very much that two fraternal
people were friends, found contacts points for this friendship.
Answering the question on escalating of military – technical
cooperation between Russia and Armenia, the Russian military has told
that “Here, it is impossible to say that Russia and Armenia increase
military – technical cooperation as Russia is open for all states, we
welcome all sides”. As he said, it is simple for those states, which
have signed the contract about military – technical cooperation, and
there are some advantages in sphere of purchase of the Russian
military technical equipment. The states, which have signed the
mentioned Agreement, can get the Russian technical equipment on the
in-Russian prices, and it is very favorable to many states of
Commonwealth.
Concerning settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, the Russian officer has told, that Russia is interested
that there were peace on the Caucasus, and considers, that for the
settlement of the said problem, it is necessary to continue
negotiating process. “It is necessary to do everything to solve the
problem in a peace way”, has emphasized I. Babichev.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NATO Responds Harshly To Azerbaijani Intransigence
Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic
Sept 13 2004
13 September 2004 — NATO has canceled military exercises that were
scheduled to start this month in Azerbaijan after authorities there
objected to the participation of Armenian officers.
NATO spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ludger Terbrueggen told RFE/RL’s
Armenian Service today that the plan was scrapped after Baku refused
to issue the Armenian troops visas.
“The reason is that Azerbaijan will not give visas to the soldiers
and officers of Armenia,” Terbrueggen said.
NATO’s decision to scrap the maneuvers comes after Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev said on 11 September that he is opposed to
Armenian troops being on Azerbaijan’s soil.
Armenian-backed forces drove Azerbaijan’s army out of the ethnic
Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s in a war that
killed 30,000 people and left about 1 million homeless.
A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but no agreement has been reached
on the territory’s final status.

Pilots not in EG ‘for health’
By Mariam Harutunian
News24 , South Africa
Sept 14 2004
Yerevan – The Armenian aircrew on trial in Equatorial Guinea on charges
of plotting a coup are guilty of nothing more serious than trying to
support their families, according to relatives waiting anxiously back
home in their former Soviet republic.
The six Armenians were among some 90 suspected mercenaries hauled
in across Africa and charged with plotting to overthrow Equatorial
Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
But their families say the six are just innocent airmen who were
unwittingly sucked into the affair when – facing unemployment and
hardship at home – they signed up for work flying shipments of freight
around Africa.
“Our husbands are not fortune-seekers and are not coup plotters,”
Agunik Abazian, wife of jailed flight engineer Razmik Khachatrian,
said from her home in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.
Since March her 52-year-old husband, along with his five colleagues,
has been languishing in the notorious Black Beach jail in Equatorial
Guinea’s capital, Malabo.
The Armenians are caught up in what prosecutors say was an audacious
plot to replace President Obiang, who has ruled his oil-rich republic
in west Africa since 1979, with exiled opposition leader Severo Moto.
The Armenian aircrew are alleged to have been part of an advanced
party stationed in Malabo to await the arrival of the main force
of mercenaries.
They are being held in Malabo along with 13 other men from South
Africa and Equatorial Guinea.
The Armenian aircrew in jail in Equatorial Guinea are from a modest
background, say their families.
The average monthly wage is less than R350. Many doctors and university
lecturers make ends meet by driving taxis or selling cigarettes.
Armenia’s struggling national airline has sacked dozens of pilots
and flight crew.
“Our husbands are highly-qualified specialists, but like many good
pilots today in Armenia, they found themselves without any work,”
said Abazian, who has two children.
“Therefore they were forced to search for work far from home. They
certainly did not set out for Africa for the sake of their health.”
The six men are employed by Tiger Air, an Armenian firm which leased
the crew and their Antonov-12 cargo plane to customers in Africa.
They arrived in Malabo in January this year.
Between then and their arrest, they flew once, to the Democratic
Republic of Congo, but returned with the hold empty, the men told a
court hearing.
Abazian said that with the help of the Red Cross, the families in
Armenia had been able to speak by telephone to the men in jail.
She said she spoke to her husband for just one minute, but he said
he was healthy, and that he was innocent.
Armenia’s ambassador to Egypt, Sergei Manassarian, has visited the
aircrew at the prison in Malabo.
He said: “My meetings and contacts in Malabo have strengthened my
conviction that our pilots are innocent and that they wil be released
in the near future.”