Author: Antonian Lara

FITCH RATINGS’ RISE OF ARMENIAN’S COUNTRY THRESHOLD EVIDENCE OF CURRENCY CONVERSION RISK REDUCTION
Arka News Agency, Armenia
Aug. 18, 2006
YEREVAN, August 18. /ARKA/. The rise of Armenia’s country threshold
from “BB-” to “BB” by the Fitch Ratings agency is evidence of reduction
of currency conversion risks in Armenia, Chairman of the Central Bank
of Armenia (CBA) Tigran Sargsyan stated in his exclusive interview
to ARKA.
According to him, Armenia’s private companies must take advantage of
this positive impulse and work at getting their own ratings that may
be higher than Armenia’s country rating.
Sargsyan pointed out that Fitch Ratings agency also announced the
rise in the country thresholds of 40 countries, including Russia
and Kazakhstan.
“The rise reflects considerable liberalization on capital markets and
currency control, as well as the countries’ further integration into
global economy,” Sargsyan said.
On June 5, 2006, Fitch Ratings assigned Armenia Issuer Default Ratings
in foreign and national currencies “BB-” with “Stable” forecast. The
Agency also assigned the country a short-term rating “B” and “country
threshold” rating “BB-” On July 24, 2006, the international rating
agency Moody’s Investors Service assigned the Armenian Government
sovereign ratings in foreign and national currency “Ba2”. P.T. -0–

ARF Delegation Visits Southern Lebanon After Cease-Fire
18.08.2006 16:18
YEREVAN (YERKIR) – A delegation of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Lebanon Central Committee visited southern Lebanon Tuesday to assess the damage
following the 30-day old Israeli attack on the country, Beirut based Aztag
Armenian Daily reported.
Accompanying the delegation were members of parliament Hagop Pakradouni and
Sebouh Hovnanian, who was a former Lebanese minister, as well as members of
the local Armenian media.
The delegation was greeted by the local leadership who led a tour of the
devastated areas.
Also touring the region was Lebanese minister Mohamad Fenaysh, who joined
the delegation in assessing the devastating conditions. Local leaders expressed
their gratitude to the Lebanese-Armenian community–especially the ARF–for
its efforts in assisting the refugees displaced from the attacks. The
Armenian community also was praised by leaders.
Following a press conference with the Armenian, Lebanese and international
media representatives, the delegation continued to meet with the displaced who
were returning to their homes following the cease-fire.

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT: SMALL ENERGY IS GATHERING MOMENTUM IN ARMENIA
Noyan Tapan
Aug 14 2006
VANADZOR, AUGUST 14, NOYAN TAPAN. The small energy sector is gathering
momentum in Armenia: 40 newly built small hydropower plants are
operating in the country, the construction of more than 50 ones is
underway, and the registration of documents for construction of another
30 hydropower plants is in process. The Armenian President Robert
Kocharian stated this at a press conference to summarize his working
visit to Lori marz. on August 11. In his words, these developments in
small energy are “a serious response to the policy that the government
has adopted to promote this sector.” During his visit to Lori marz,
the President familiarized himself with the work of Kurtan small
hydropower plant (with the basic capacity of 5.7 megawatts) and the
wind power station of Pushkin mountain pass (the total capacity of
4 plants makes 2.5 megawatts). In R. Kocharian’s opinion, Lori marz
has a considerable potential for development of small energy. It is
envisaged to build 235 small hydropower plants in the region, with
feasibility studies already being carried out for 95 such plants.

Hindu, India
Aug. 13, 2006
Lebanon: How many times 1948?
ANJALI KAMAT
In October 2005, Lebanon saw demonstrations and heady hopes for a new
future. Where are those hopes now?
Qana carries a heavy symbolic weight in Lebanon.
I VISITED Lebanon twice this past year; first in October 2005 and
then, more recently, in May 2006. During my first trip, the country
was consumed by speculations over possible revelations in the first
report from the UN inquiry into the assassination of former Prime
Minister Rafiq al Hariri. It had been eight long months of explosions
and mourning – but also of million-strong demonstrations and heady
hopes for a new future. The day the report was released, Beirut was
practically under curfew. Driving along the former “green line,”
which had divided the city into the predominantly Christian East and
Muslim West during the civil war, Beirut’s empty streets seemed
stalked by fear, uncertainty, and an aggressive mix of memorialising
and amnesia.
As my gracious Armenian friend proudly showed me around her beautiful
city, we walked through the reconstructed alleys of central Beirut
and followed Hariri’s last footsteps – oddly memorialised in
Hollywood-style silver footprints – past rows of sunny cafes and
overpriced air-conditioned boutiques.
Stark contrast
This area, rebuilt under Hariri, was in stark contrast to the
bombed-out buildings that still haunt much of the city. These
remnants of the civil war, every remaining surface pockmarked with
dozens of bullet holes, stood like defiant reminders of the
unspeakable horrors of the war years – and of the lingering poverty
and disquiet – that the Lebanese seemed so determined to forget.
Every inch of wall space across the city was covered with glossy
pictures of both the “martyrs of the Independence Intifada,” the
vocal opponents of Syrian influence in Lebanon who had been
assassinated in the preceding months, as well as a motley crew of
controversial political figures: including former Christian warlords
Samir Geagea and Michel Aoun and Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Any remaining space was prominently occupied by English and Arabic
stickers demanding “The Truth,” in reference to the Hariri-family led
campaign to uncover the motives behind the assassinations between
February and October 2005 that claimed over two dozen lives.
Next to Hariri himself, the most popular poster was of the
charismatic Samir Kassir, a Palestinian-Lebanese leader of the
Democratic Left movement and a prominent intellectual who played an
active role in the popular and multi-confessional uprising in March
and April demanding government accountability and an end to Syrian
presence in Lebanon.
He was killed by a car bomb outside his home in the plush Christian
neighbourhood of Achrafieh on June 2, 2005. Critical of both
repressive Syrian power in Lebanon as well as the brutality of
American imperialism, he had become a hero of sorts for the secular,
democratic left across the Arab world. On seeing his pictures, my
fellow traveller, an outspoken Yemeni feminist, immediately ripped
one of them off the wall to take back home with her.
* * *
When I returned half a year later, the UN investigation, though still
ongoing, had slipped off the front pages, and the urgency created by
the assassinations and the “independence uprising” seemed to have
cooled off.
The political class was in the midst of a “national dialogue” and
politicians from the left and right, anti- and pro-Syrian, religious
and secular, Druze, Maronite, Orthodox, Sunni, and Shiite, many of
them once sworn enemies, were all talking to each other.
The rest of the country, it seemed, was trying very hard to put the
previous year behind them and concentrate on the World Cup and the
summer ahead. Beyond the immediate importance of one’s allegiance to
three most popular teams, Brazil, Italy, or Germany, people I talked
to were planning holidays, weddings, conferences, art shows, film
festivals, concerts, and their futures.
I too was content to let politics and history slide as I enjoyed the
breathtaking beauty of the Lebanese coastline and hillsides and
feasted on the finest seafood in the picturesque old port towns of
Jbeil and Saida. But ambling through the bustling alleys of the
Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra in search of a kuffiyeh – that
chequered symbol of Palestine solidarity – even as I entertained
fantasies of moving to Beirut, I woke back up to history. It was
here, and in the neighbouring camp of Shatila, that in September 1982
the Lebanese Phalangist militias, under the watchful eyes of Ariel
Sharon, massacred over 1,500 Palestinians – a people whom, in
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s words, “the waves of forgetfulness
had cast upon the shores of Beirut.”
* * *
Today, a little over two months since my last visit to Lebanon, the
country has been plunged into chaos and in an ironic twist,
Palestinians in Sabra, Shatila, and elsewhere – Lebanon’s “unwelcome
guests” – have opened their camps to shelter a new generation of
refugees.
One month of Israeli air strikes, now combined with ground attacks,
has meant daily massacres, one million refugees, shattered
infrastructure, fears about the possible use of cluster bombs and
depleted uranium munitions, and a 15,000-tonne oil spill along
Lebanon’s coastline that former Greenpeace campaigner Wael Hmaidan
describes as the “biggest environmental catastrophe in the history of
the country.”
One of the most outrageous acts of Israeli aggression on Lebanon was
the indiscriminate bombing of an apartment building in Qana on July
30, that crushed some 60 civilians to death, over half of them
children. They died, under the rubble of a building they had sought
refuge in, when it collapsed after two air strikes in the middle of
the night.
Symbolic weight
Qana carries a heavy symbolic weight in Lebanon: ten years ago, this
mountain village, where Jesus was supposed to have once made water
into wine, was shelled by Israel, during its “Operation Grapes of
Wrath,” killing 106 civilians – again, more than half of them children
– seeking refuge at a UN shelter.
In the despairing words of Beiruti artist Mazen Kerbaj: “2,000 years
ago, in Qana, Jesus transformed water into wine; today in Qana, the
Israeli Air Force transformed children into ashes; today in Beirut, I
am unable to transform this page into a drawing.”
My Armenian friend asked me if Americans would still support
expedited deliveries of bombs to Israel if the US media had shown
them the horrifying images from Qana of dozens of dead children being
exhumed from the rubble. Like Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent
on July 31, she imagined that you had to have a “heart of stone to
not feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced.” I’m
not sure how to convey my cynical sense that for Americans, and to
some extent people all over the world, weary of daily tragedies in
their inboxes and morning papers, what is happening in Lebanon, as
with Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq, and Sudan, will soon become quite
“normal” – perhaps even rationalised as part of the endless “cycle of
violence” in a “naturally” turbulent region, or worse, a necessary
cost of the “war on terror.”
Powerful statement
Two weeks into the start of the Israeli assault, 70 Lebanese writers,
artists, journalists, academics, and filmmakers, circulated a
powerful statement against U.S.-supported Israeli impunity and the
normalisation of state terror. Building on a growing international
campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions, they called for
marginalising Israel – along the lines of movements against apartheid
South Africa – through “boycotting Israeli products and Israeli
academic and scientific institutions that do not condemn the Israeli
aggression against Lebanon.”
But even as people in Lebanon and around the world register their
protest, I can’t shake Palestinian artist Emily Jacir’s unsettling
words: “Is this all fodder for entertainment? Something for people to
write about, make art about, make films about, cry about, complain
about, shout about, and then go home and live while the bombs drop
and entire countries are destroyed? How many generations have to live
through these Israeli horrors? Watching the generation of my parents
having to re-live all this yet again … how many times 1948?”

OLIGARCHS PAY TAXES AT THE EXPENSE OF TAXPAYERS RATHER
Aram Zakaryan
Lragir.am
10 Aug 06
We have already reported relying on the official statistics of 1000 big
taxpayers that the native oligarchs, operating in the black economy,
have started paying less taxes to the government, which means only
one thing – the guys are preparing for the election, the slush funds
are collected. And even a superficial study of the pattern of taxes
paid by the same oligarchs reveals that the oligarchs, who generally
pay very little taxes, a greater part of what they pay is from the
purse of the other taxpayers, i.e. common people, and only a small
part is from their own pockets.
The share of indirect taxes, namely the VAT and the excise tax,
included in the price of goods and services, prevails in the pattern
of taxes paid by all the oligarchs of Armenia. In other words, all
of us pay these taxes, which are included in the price of a product
or a service. In the meantime, direct taxes, such as income tax,
profit tax, are paid by the seller of the product or service.
First, there are companies which did not pay the VAT or the excise tax,
namely City Petrol importing gas to Armenia, and Pares Armenia.
At one time, Natali Pharm owned by Samvel Alexanyan, importing
medicine, did not pay the excise tax, whereas in the first half of
2006 this company paid 326.698 million drams of VAT and excise tax,
and then 4.5 times less income tax and profit tax, totaling 68.157
million. The sugar importing Fleetfood owned by Samvel Alexanyan
also paid part of its taxes at the expense of its customers. It
paid 261.608 million drams of VAT and excise tax and 7.8 times less,
37 million drams of income tax and profit tax.
The same situation is with the businesses run by Mikhail Baghdasarov,
referred to as a close oligarch of Serge Sargsyan. Mika Cement paid
244.827 drams of indirect taxes, and 0 drams from its own purse.
Armavia paid VAT and excise tax of 76.9 million drams and over three
times less direct taxes, 22.935 million drams.
The amount of VAT and excise tax paid by Gagik Tsarukyan’s Multi
Leon totaled 67.247 million drams, and the income tax and profit tax
was 2.585 million drams. Ararat Wine, Vodka and Brandy also paid 2.5
less direct taxes than indirect taxes. There is reliable information
that Jermuk Group owned by Republican Ashot Arsenyan, the sponsor of
unofficial leisure of Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan during his
foreign visits does favor and charity to the prime minister at the
expense of Jermuk drinkers. This company paid 189.504 million drams
of VAT and excise tax and 9 times less, 19.6 million drams of income
tax and profit tax. Another oligarch, new Republican Levon Sargsyan,
is also a miser when his own purse is concerned. His Yerevan Mill
paid 110.754 million drams of indirect taxes and only 5.8 million
drams or 20 times less from its own income and profit. His Vedi Alco
paid 216.186 million drams of indirect taxes and 21 times less, 9.690
million drams from its own income and profit. Getap Winery owned by
Levon Sargsyan paid 52.8 million drams of indirect taxes and 16-17
times less, 3.450 million drams from its own income and profit.
Artashes Tumanyan’s Mets Aniv, Mher Sedrakyan’s Erebuni Alco, Areg
Ghukasyan’s Salt Factory of Avan, Attorney General’s friend Lyova
Sargsyan’s Concern Energy, Shant + owned by another friend of Attorney
General’s, Lusakert Poultry Farm owned by Harutiun Pambukyan who became
Republican for the sake of Serge Sargsyan and other pro-governmental
oligarchs organize their companies and taxes similarly.

SIXTH SITTING OF SOUTH CAUCASUS PA INITIATIVE GROUP TO BE HELD IN DECEMBER
PanARMENIAN.Net
09.08.2006 14:29 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Parliamentarians of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan
agreed to hold the sixth sitting of the Initiative Group of the
South Caucasus Parliamentary Assembly in December 2006. Political
situation in the South Caucasus and ways of conflict settlement
will be discussed at the sitting. Besides the parliamentarians will
consider ecology, transport, banking business and expanding of ties
with European structures as well as some organization issues referring
to the activities of the structure. The fifth sitting of the South
Caucasus PA Initiative Group was held in London July 20-24 in London,
reported Interfax.

OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRMEN DISCUSS CURRENT STAGE OF NKR
SETTLEMENT PROCESS PARIS, AUGUST 4, NOYAN TAPAN. On August 2, 2006,
the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Ambassador Yuriy Merzlyakov
(Russia), Ambassador Bernard Fassier (France) and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State Matthew Bryza (United States of America) met at
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris to assess the current stage
in the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. According to the
information submitted to Noyan Tapan by the Embassy of France, the
Co-Chairs discussed as well the results of Matthew Bryza’s introductory
visit to the region, in his capacity as a Co-Chair. Proceeding from
the St Petersburg G8 Chairman’s statement on Nagorno Karabakh, the
Co-Chairs considered different options to achieve its objectives, which
will be proposed to the parties, and await them for their thoughts.

CENTRAL HOTEL OF SHUSHI TO BE RECONSTRUCTED
Lragir.am
03 Aug 06
American Armenian businessmen and benefactors, the co-owners of the
former central hotel of the town of Shushi the Papayants family and
Abo Poghikyan (U.S.) are visiting Karabakh. Several years ago the
9-storey hotel was transferred to the benefactors, which was partly
repaired by the owners of Armenicum. At that time there was a plan to
open an anti-AIDS center in Shushi. This aim was not fulfilled, and it
was decided to transfer the hotel for benefactors for reconstruction.
According to the co-owners, the hotel will be opened by early May
2007. It is also foreseen by the same project to improve the park
near the central square. The reconstruction of Shushi is gathering
momentum. And there is already a need for a comfortable hotel.

Press Release
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Officer
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:
PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon
Armenian version:
&quo t;CARDINAL WILLEBRANDS HAS BEEN
AN OUTSTANDING ECUMENICAL FIGURE”
Said His Holiness Aram I
In a letter addressed to the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for promoting
Christian Unity, His Holiness Aram I expressing his great sorrow for the
passing away of the Cardinal Willebrands, said: “The Cardinal has played a
significant role in the ecumenical movement by promoting the spirit of the
Council Vatican II, and by giving a concrete manifestation to the
committment of the Roman Cathoclic Church to the ecumenical goals and the
visible unity of the Church”.
Speaking about the relations with the Armenian Church, and his several
visits to Antelias, the headquarters of the Armenian Catholicosate of
Cilicia, Catholicos Aram I has discribed him “as a great friend of the
Armenian Church and people”.
Born in the Netherlands, in 1909, Cardinal Johannes Gerardus Maria
Willebrands has received holy orders in May 1934. He has become bishop in
1964 and Cardinal in 1969. From 1969-1989 he has served as president of the
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Cardinal Willebrands has
been the Archbishop of Utrecht, from 1965-1983.
##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the Ecumenical
activities of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician Catholicosate, the
administrative center of the church is located in Antelias, Lebanon.

ARMENIAN AND AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENTS MUST TAKE DECISION ON REFERENDUM, SAYS MATTHEW BRYZA
Baku, August 2. ArmInfo-TURAN. At present neither Armenia, nor
Azerbaijan have agreed to any proposals of the OSCE MG co-chairmen.
Part of the co-chairmen’s proposals are still under discussion,
Matthew Bryza, U.S. co-chairman of the OSCE MG, said in an interview
to Yeni Musavat daily, while commenting on the reaction of Baku and
Yerevan to the co- chairmen’s proposals on the conflict settlement.
With regard to the referendum on the Karabakh status, Bryza said
that this idea was proposed by his predecessors, not by him. “The
question on a referendum must be first agreed on by the presidents,”
said Bryza. Results of the referendum will depend on its format and
on the voting of the people living in Nagorno Karabakh. Bryza did not
rule out the possibility of counting the votes of people that lived
in Karabakh until 1988.
Commenting on a statement about the participation of only Nagorno
Karabakh’s population in voting, Bryza said that this is not
his personal position. “These are proposals put forward by the
co-chairmen. I simply reiterate them. We did not insist on adoption
or non-adoption of these proposals. We simply put forward proposals
for your discretion,” said Bryza.
He also stressed that the latest proposals are the best ones that have
been discussed during the past two years. He urged the parties of the
conflict to express a concrete opinion on adoption, non-adoption or
change of proposals.