ARMENIAN SIDE HAS NO AGREEMENT WITH IRAN ON SAVING URMIA LAKE

Mediamax
Aug 6 2012
Armenia

Yerevan, August 6. /Mediamax/. Armenia and Iran have no agreements
on saving the Urmia Lake.

Head of the Water Resources Management Agency at the Ministry of
Nature Protection of Armenia Volodya Narimanyan told Mediamax that the
Iranian side didn’t present any official proposals to get Armenia’s
support in saving the lake.

Mediamax recalls that head of the Environmental Protection Organization
of Iran Mohammad Javad Mohammadizadeh stated several days ago that
Iran and Armenia reached an agreement on cooperation in the issue
of recovering Urmia Lake and Armenia would provide water to Iran to
this end.

In reply to this, head of the Water Resources Management Agency of
Armenia stated that such issues were not discussed during the visit
of Iranian delegation to Yerevan on July 16-18.

“Armenia hasn’t been officially made such a proposal. During the
meeting, we discussed issues of researching the river of Araks and
setting up a joint park”, stated Volodya Narimanyan.

He didn’t rule out that the issue of saving the lake will be discussed
with the Iranian side in the future noting that it’s yet early to
speak about such a cooperation.

The Iranian side says that dewatering of the Urmia Lake “will become
en environmental disaster” which will affect neighboring countries
as well.

According to the data provided by the Iranian environmental
organizations, almost half of the lake’s surface has dried up and
turned into salt layers.

Mass protests which participants condemned the government of not
willing to take actions for saving the lake were held in the towns
of Urmia and Tavriz last year.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress