Author: Andres-Papazian

Edmonton Journal (Alberta), Canada
May 27, 2012 Sunday
Final Edition

Quebec wants cut of gem trade; Most diamond processors have exited N.W.T

BY: Levon Sevunts, Postmedia News; Montreal Gazette

“It was minus 61 degrees when we landed in Yellowknife in 2001, it
took my breath away,” Gevorg Mkhitaryan recalled, his attention
focused on the brilliant gem he inspected through a powerful
magnifying glass.

“I loved it. It was beautiful and so new to me.”

Mkhitaryan was part of a group of about 60 Armenian diamond cutters
and polishers who were brought to the Northwest Territories to work in
Yellowknife’s nascent diamond processing industry.

Under Soviet rule, Armenia was one of the USSR’s main diamond
processing centres and had developed world-class expertise in cutting
and polishing. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia
fell on hard times.

With their skills in high demand everywhere from Botswana to Canada,
diamond cutters joined a mass exodus of skilled workers from Armenia.
Almost one-third of the country’s population emigrated in search of
better living conditions.

Mkhitaryan worked in Yellowknife for two years before he returned to
Armenia to get married in 2003.

Three years later, Canada called again. He and 12 other Armenian
diamond cutters were invited to work at a processing plant in Matane,
a small town on Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula. Matane was hoping to become
the province’s diamond processing capital, but those dreams vanished
in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis that devastated parts of
the industry.

The Diarough plant, where Mkhitaryan was working, shut down in 2009,
and he moved his wife and his newborn daughter to Montreal.

Today, he’s one of the five co-owners of Melisende Diamonds Ltd., a
small polishing operation that opened in 2010 with the lofty goal of
becoming a major player in Canada’s emerging diamond processing
industry.

“We want to grow, we want to expand,” Mkhitaryan, 35, said, squinting
into the magnifying glass again.

It’s an industry where big dreams have been dashed many times before.

Canada is a relative newcomer to diamond mining. The first deposits
were discovered near Lac de Gras in the Northwest Territories by two
enterprising geologists, Stewart Blusson and Chuck Fipke, in 1991.

Diamond production at BHP Billiton’s Ekati Mine on Lac de Gras, about
300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, started in 1998. In 2003, Rio
Tinto opened its Diavik Mine not far from Ekati. And in 2008, De Beers
opened its first Canadian mine at Snap Lake, about 220 kilometres
northeast of Yellowknife.

The same year, De Beers started commercial diamond production at its
Victor mine, about 90 kilometres from the First Nations community of
Attawapiskat, in northern Ontario.

In less than a decade, Canada was propelled to the diamond mining
major leagues, becoming the world’s third-largest producer, by value,
of rough stones, behind Botswana and Russia.

But Canada has had a much harder time creating a viable diamond
processing industry.

>From the very beginning, Ottawa and the government of Northwest
Territories pushed diamond mines to set aside about 10 per cent of
their output for processing in Yellowknife. The idea seemed simple
enough. With all the attention that conflict or so called “blood”
diamonds were getting in the international media and even in
Hollywood, Canadian authorities saw a marketing opportunity in
offering “ethical” Canadian diamonds.

Experts reckoned that some customers were ready to pay up to 10 or 15
per cent more for Canadian produced diamonds, knowing that no blood
was spilled and no child labour was used in their production. The
government of Northwest Territories even came up with a clever
marketing gimmick, a tiny laser-etched polar bear on diamonds produced
in Yellowknife.

With no indigenous diamond processing workforce, authorities brought
in experienced foreign cutters and polishers to staff the newly opened
factories. Gagik Tamrazyan, Mkhitaryan’s friend and business partner,
was one of them.

“I came to Yellowknife to teach Canadians how to cut and how to work
with diamonds to get the best yield,” Tamrazyan, 39, said over the din
of polishing machines and Armenian pop music blaring in his Montreal
facility.

At their peak, from 2003 to 2006, the four factories that had set up
shop in Yellowknife’s Diamond Row district – Sirius, Arslanyan Cutting
Works, Laurelton and Canada Dene Diamonds – employed about 200 people.
But they had a hard time competing with factories in India and
Thailand that operated at a fraction of the cost, Tamrazyan said.

“The cost of cutting and working in Yellowknife was very high. Spare
parts for the machinery came from Armenia and it took up to three
months for them to get to Yellowknife.”

Bob Bies, a manager at the Arslanyan Cutting Works, said the factory
owners didn’t have deep enough pockets to operate in the cutthroat
diamond business, where they had to pay mining companies millions in
advance while waiting up to six months to be paid by their customers.

One by one, the diamond processing plants in Yellowknife shut down,
leaving dozens of highly qualified cutters without jobs. Today, only
one facility, operated by Crossworks Manufacturing of Vancouver, B.C.,
with barely a dozen Vietnamese workers, continues cutting and
polishing diamonds in Yellowknife.

Crossworks has a much bigger facility in Sudbury, Ont., where it
processes rough diamonds from the Victor Mine.

Thanks to an agreement negotiated between the Ontario government, De
Beers Canada and the Diamond Trading Company, the marketing and
distribution arm of De Beers, Crossworks receives up to 10 per cent of
the Victor Mine rough diamond output. And that’s the model Harry
Ohanessian, president of Melisende Diamonds, wants the government of
Quebec to replicate when the Renard Mine in the James Bay region
becomes operational in 2015.

“The idea is to get rough diamonds from our Quebec mine and to have
them cut here in Quebec, as they have done it in the Northwest
Territories and Ontario,” Ohanessian said.

Renard is owned by the Vancouver-based Stornoway Diamond Corp. and the
province, which holds a 37-per-cent stake in the mine. The mine is a
key part of Premier Jean Charest’s Plan Nord project for the
development of northern Quebec. The province is also planning to spend
$330 million to extend Route 167 to allow all-season access to the
mine.

Ohanessian, 40, believes there is still a lot of demand for Canadian
diamonds and he says he intends to hire the best diamond cutters from
Northwest Territories and Matane plants to not only work at the
Montreal facility but also to train a new generation of diamond
cutters.

“At this moment we have six cutters and one bruter (bruting is the
process of grinding the rough diamond to give it its outline),”
Ohanessian said. “But when the Renard Mine opens up and, hopefully,
the natural resources ministry insists on keeping 10 per cent or any
percentage of diamonds in Quebec, we will definitely increase those
numbers to 18 to 24 cutters.”

These are well-paying jobs, Ohanessian noted, with experienced cutters
making $50,000 to $60,000 a year.

He said he’d also like to see Quebec develop its own process to
certify diamonds produced in the province and create a distinct
marketing logo similar to the polar bear etched on Northwest
Territories diamonds.

“We have also invented a new round diamond cut, which will be even
more brilliant than the HCA (Holloway Cut Advisor) round brilliant
cut,” Ohanessian said proudly.

For now, he and his partners buy their stones from Brazil and Africa.
Each stone they cut is then sent to New York for certification by the
Gemological Institute of America. With their GIA certificates, they’re
sold to jewellers who put them in engagement rings, earrings,
bracelets and necklaces.

By having some of the best cutters in the business, Melisende said
they can compete with the lower-paid diamond cutters in India or
Thailand.

“It’s very simple. In polished diamonds, the value of the diamond is
not in labour, it’s in the cut,” Ohanessian said.

The price of a diamond cut to an “excellent” grade, according to GIA
classification, could be thousands of dollars higher than the price of
a similar gem cut to a “good” grade, more than making up the
difference in wages paid in India vs. Canada, Ohanessian said.

For Mkhitaryan, every rough stone that ends up on his polishing table
is a creative challenge.

“I love this job, I love seeing the light play in the stone and
working the stone, realizing that, thanks to my hands and eyes, I can
achieve an almost perfect symmetry.

“I love giving the diamond its sparkle.”

From: A. Papazian

Muscat Daily, Sultanate of Oman
May 27, 2012 Sunday

Story of a historian

At 96, Bernard Lewis still commands the pen. In his autobiography
Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian, Lewis
reflects not only on his painstaking commitment to the historical
truth and a hatred of what he calls ‘the falsification of history’ but
also on his passionate, at times obsessive curiosity about different
cultures and places.

As a historian his interests range widely, from the history of food to
the fall of dynasties. Learning to speak, read and write languages
helped him in his quest for truth. Lewis has met everyone from Golda
Meir to Moammar Gadhafi. On his journeys, Lewis has slept in obscure
Syrian villages and desert tents, as well as in sumptuous palaces.

Bernard Lewis, (born May 31, 1916) is a British-American historian,
scholar in Oriental studies and political commentator. Specialising in
the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West,
Lewis is especially well known in academic circles for his works on
the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Lewis served in the British Army during the Second World War before
being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to
the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London
and was appointed to the new chair of Near and Middle Eastern History.

Lewis is a widely read expert and is regarded as one of the West’s
leading scholars of that region. His advice has been frequently sought
by policymakers, including the George W Bush administration.

In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Martin
Kramer, whose PhD thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that, over
a 60 year career, he has emerged as “the most influential postwar
historian of Islam and Middle East.”

Consider one passage, chosen from The Emergence of Modern Turkey
(1961), his classic study based on pioneering research in the Ottoman
Imperial Archives. Describing the death of the Turkish ruler Kemal
Atatürk in 1938, he offers a summary of the man’s character and
temperament:

‘Kemal Atatürk was a man of swift and decisive action, of sudden and
often violent decision. A tough and brilliant soldier, a hard drinker
and wencher, he was in all things a man of immense will and abounding
vitality.

By his contemporaries he was often called a dictator, and in a sense
he certainly was. But in saying this one must remember that his rule
was very different from that of other men, in Europe and the Middle
East yesterday and today, to whom the same term is applied.

An autocrat by personal and professional bias, dominating and
imperious by temperament, he yet showed a respect for decency and
legality, for human and political standards, that is in astonishing
contrast with the behaviour of lesser and more pretentious men. His
was a dictatorship without the uneasy over the shoulder glance, the
terror of the door bell, the dark menace of the concentration camp.’

As a boy studying medieval European history, Lewis recalls, he always
‘wanted to know the history of the other side’. This desire has led
him not only to view his subjects from unexpected angles but also to
explore controversial topics, such as the vexed issue of race in
Islamic culture or the unsavoury history of Muslim slave trading.

In Notes on a Century Lewis details the disputes he has weathered,
including distant ones. For instance, in the first edition of The
Emergence of Modern Turkey, he wrote of ‘the terrible holocaust of
1916, when a million and a half Armenians perished’.
When the third edition of the book was published a year later (in
1962), he replaced the word ‘holocaust’ with ‘slaughter’. As he
explains in his memoir, he made the substitution “not to minimise what
happened but to avoid a comparison with the destruction of six million
Jews in Nazi ruled Europe, for which ‘holocaust’ had by then become
almost a technical term.”

Still, after giving an interview to Le Monde in which he discussed
this change of terms, he was faced with four lawsuits in France on the
charge of ‘Holocaust denial’. In the end, he was required to pay a
mere single franc in damages to his accusers, as well as costs.

It is all too tempting to describe Bernard Lewis, the distinguished
historian of the Islamic world, as venerable. Lewis, who turns 96 on
May 31, seems to possess the aura of a sage.

Whether writing about the early history of the Arabs or the
development of the modern Turkish state, he has always been unusually
alert to nuance and ambiguity; he is wary of his sources and tests
them against other evidence.
In Notes on a Century, his lively new memoir, he writes that his work
in archives instilled in him ‘a profound mistrust of written
documents’.

From: A. Papazian

New Europe
May 27 2012

Yerevan to support stability in Afghanistan

ARTICLE | MAY 27, 2012 – 9:33PM
On May 21 in Chicago a meeting at the level of Foreign Ministers
dedicated to the Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan headed by
the Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandian.

Delivering a speech at the Ministerial meeting, the Armenian Minister
of Foreign Affairs reaffirmed Armenia’s commitment to continue to
support the efforts undertaken towards the establishment of peace,
security, stability and national solidarity in Afghanistan.

`Security and positive shifts are obvious, surely more efforts are
needed to make this process irreversible. Unfortunately, we witness
every day that smooth transition period is not an easy task,’
Nalbandyan said. `Destructive forces of peace and stability hinder to
the establishment of the security in Afghanistan.

It is important to ensure the process of positive change in
Afghanistan; to prevent those destructive forces of terror that ravage
not only their own soil but at times spread far away as mercenaries ,
in order the whole region will become a positive driving force and
make use of its natural riches for the benefit of the Afghan people,
the development of the country and region.”

Nalbandian underscored that Armenia would continue to contribute to
the establishment, maintenance and strengthening of peace, security
and stability in Afghanistan as up to the withdrawal of the
international security assistance forces in 2014, as well as
afterwards.

From: A. Papazian

TRANSPORTS
Le prolongement du métro d’Erévan vers l’aéroport « Zvartnots »
pourrait être construit dans un an

La voie du prolongement du métro de la station « Tcharbakh » en
direction du terminal de l’aéroport internationale « Zvartnots »
d’Erévan pourrait être construite dans un an. Le directeur des « Rails
du Sud Caucase » (Haravgovgasian yergatoughi), Victor Rebets vient de
l’affirmer lors d’une conférence de presse à Erévan le 24 mai.
Actuellement sa compagnie prépare le projet. La ligne supplémentaire
sera de 7,8 km dont seulement 5,3 km à construire. L’ouvrage
comprendra un tunnel de 810 mètres. Après sa construction les
voyageurs pourront relier Erévan à « Zvartnots » par le métro.

Krikor Amirzayan

dimanche 27 mai 2012,
Krikor Amirzayan ©armenews.com

From: A. Papazian

Military expert says Azerbaijan has unsettled conflicts with neighbors

15:39 26/05/2012 » Politics

Azerbaijan shares unsettled conflicts with all its neighbors, military
expert Artsrun Hovhannisyan said today in a news conference adding
that due to the powerful states they remain frozen.

`Each of the conflicts has a war risk. Although potential war with
Russia is little possible, military operations with Georgia,
Turkmenistan and Iran are on high risk,’ said Artsrun Hovhannisyan.

The expert said Azerbaijan has created such atmosphere himself which
is evident that it is an artificial state with serious interior and
foreign problems, said the expert.

Source: Panorama.am

From: A. Papazian

The Mystery of Elite Seeds

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 12:20:15 – 26/05/2012

Thousands of farmers of Armavir region are facing starvation. They
believed minister Sergo Karapetyan’s legends about elite seeds of
wheat and decided to use the RA government program of development of
seed farming and seed production for 2010-2014.

First let us clarify what is elite seed.

The seeds must have a certificate of compliance, cannot have an
analogue, must be adjusted to all the climate zones of the country
where they will be used, must be resistant to draught, productivity
must exceed its former analogues 1.5-2 times.

The farmers trusted government’s pledges and received 200-250 kg of
seeds per hectare. 286 tons of elite seeds were provided to the region
of Armavir. According to the government program, the seeds are
disbursed free of charge, after the harvest the farmers must return
twice as much to the government.

Seeds were distributed to 29 communities which disbursed seeds to
farmers by a governor’s office-municipality-farmer three party
contract based on the principle of nepotism. The farmers were
encouraged by free seeds, they borrowed money from friends of banks to
return it after the harvest.

In Armavir harvest of grains is in July and August but the elite seeds
will not let the farmers wait till then, and in some communities there
will be no harvest at all. The stalks are already 25-30 cm tall and
formed spikes with only 7-10 grains. According to experts, such spikes
grow from second reproduction of degenerated seeds.

According to the RA law on seeds, the ministry of agriculture must
carry out field testing, laboratory testing before certifying seeds.
Article 12 of this law provides for compensation for damage inflicted
on economic operators.

The damage per hectare is 339,000 – 352,000 drams. The total damage
inflicted on farmers for 1270 hectares is 431-447 million drams (1.1
million dollars). If we also count the profit expected by farmers, at
least 100,000 drams per hectare, the total damage is 1.42 million
dollars.

Meanwhile, the ministry of agriculture ignores this major damage
inflicted on farmers and the minister merely announced that the
weather this year was not favorable for wheat. However, other seeds
which were accidentally mixed with the so-called elite seeds grew
70-80 cm tall, with over 14 grains in the spike. This fact proves the
seeds were low quality.

The farmers will have to harvest their fields in 20 days, and the
combine will not be able to gather the short spikes, and this time the
ministry of agriculture will claim that farmers do not know how to
harvest correctly. The same situation is in other regions.

The head of one of the affected villages told us (he wanted to stay
anonymous for clear reasons) there were no elite seeds at all. The
farmers got grain of second reproduction produced by major wheat
farmers who reached agreement with the government.

From: A. Papazian

PROSPEROUS ARMENIA PARTY LEADER, SECOND PRESIDENT MEET IN BELARUS? – NEWSPAPER

news.am
May 26, 2012 | 06:59

YEREVAN. – Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP) Chairman Gagik Tsarukyan
will return to the country on May 28, Hraparak daily writes.

“[And] With a pleasant coincidence, [Armenia’s second President]
Robert Kocharyan likewise will return to Armenia [but] from Moscow
on the same day.

The analyst circles not only do not rule out [the possibility] that
they met in Belarus, under the ‘godfathership’ of [Belarusian President
Alexander] Lukashenko, but they also find that Gagik Tsarukyan’s
and Robert Kocharyan’s visits to Belarus and Russia were symbolic
‘meetings,’ whereby they wished to make Russia understand who their
real friend is in Armenia, that, unlike [Armenia’s PM] Tigran and
[President] Serzh Sargsyan, it wishes to enter the Eurasian Union
equally with Lukashenko.

And this seems to have been appreciated by Russia, by allowing [the
PAP] to leave the coalition [government of Armenia],” Hraparak writes.

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIA’S BREAD PRICES ARE EXPECTED TO RISE – NEWSPAPER

news.am
May 26, 2012 | 06:44

YEREVAN. – The economists claim that vodka production, which is
sizeable in Armenia, likewise causes an increase in the prices of
bread and pasta in the country. That is to say, alcohol producers
also purchase wheat from the market, Zhoghovurd daily writes.

“Those who are close to the Agriculture Ministry have informed that
around thirty percent of the wheat being consumed in Armenia is
local production. But this volume should not have impacted the [US]
dollar-[Armenian] dram ratio, whereas all bread manufacturers note
these days that bread product prices have risen as a result of the
dollar’s gaining value.

Incidentally, the next wave of bread-price-increase could commence
several months later, [and] as a consequence of the expected drought
in Russia,” Zhoghovurd writes.

From: A. Papazian

L’ARMENIE NE SERA PAS SANCTIONNEE PAR LES ORGANISATEURS DE L’EUROVISION
Krikor Amirzayan

armenews.com
samedi 26 mai 2012

l’absence de l’Armenie est signalee par de nombreux journalistes
et televisions

La Chaîne publique d’Armenie qui a boycotte la diffusion des
demi-finales de l’Eurovision-2012 le 22 et 24 mai, ne sera pas
sanctionnee par les organisateurs du concours europeen de la chanson,
l’Union europeenne de radio-Television, l’EBU. Selon l’un de ses
responsables, Yarmi Siym, l’Armenie aura toutefois l’obligation de
diffuser la finale de l’Eurovision de soir. Les citoyens d’Armenie
ne pourront prendre au vote du fait du forfait de l’Armenie pour
cette edition 2012 de l’Eurovision. Fin fevrier, face a la demande
de nombreux artistes Armeniens, les responsables de l’Eurovision en
Armenie avaient decide de ne pas participer a Bakou a cet Eurovision
qui ne sera qu’une grande vitrine de propagande de la dictature
d’Aliev. L’Armenie n’est donc pas sanctionnee -et de nombreux
journalistes etrangers, et televisions, au regard de la dictature
de Bakou comprennent le geste des Armeniens- et elle participera
normalement a l’edition 2013 de ce concours de l’Eurovision.

From: A. Papazian

TENSIONS ESCALATE ON AZERBAIJAN-ARMENIA BORDER FRONTLINE

APA
May 25 2012
Azerbaijan

Baki – APA. Armenian army’s units opened machinegun fire on Azerbaijani
positions in Gizilhajili, Karimli and Ashagi Askipara villages of
Azerbaijan’s Gazakh region and nameless heights of Azerbaijan’s
Tovuz region from Berkaber village of Armenia’s Ijevan region, from
Mososgerkh village of Armenia’s Berd region on May 24 at 16:10-16:20,
16:50-17:05, 21:30-21:36, 23:05-23:09, at 17:45-18:10, from Berdavan
and Voskevan villages of Armenia’s Noyenberyan region and from the
nameless heights of Azerbaijan’s Dashkesan region at 18:35-18:50,
23:10-23:14, at 17:20-18:10.

According to the press service of the Defense Ministry the enemy was
silenced by retaliation fire.

From: A. Papazian