Author: Badalian Vardan

Meeting the Armenians
Sofia Echo, Bulgaria
Aug 1 2005
PRESIDENT Georgi Purvanov had a working meeting with his Armenian
counterpart Robert Kocharyan, the President’s press secretariat said.
The “no neckties” meeting took place during Kocharyan’s informal
visit to Bulgaria and was held in the Evksinograd Residence.
The two presidents expressed satisfaction with political dialogue
between their countries over the past years.
“The European and Euro-Atlantic orientation of Bulgaria and Armenia has
turned into an important pillar of bilateral relations,” Purvanov said.
He and Kocharyan exchanged views about opportunities to activate
trade and economic relations, which both felt had not reached the
level of their political dialogue. One of the reasons for the lack
of economic relations, according to the presidents was the lack of a
through air service between the Bulgarian and Armenian capitals. They
said they were ready to encourage their respective executive branches
to resolve the issue.
Purvanov and Kocharyan discussed the two countries’ relations in
culture, education and science. The Bulgarian head of state underscored
the need to open cultural and information centres in Sofia and Yerevan
on a reciprocal basis.

Ukraine to Send Poland Gas from Iran?
Polish News Bulletin; Jul 28, 2005

Ukraine’s Fuel and Energy Ministry and Iran’s Petroleum Ministry have
signed a letter of intent concerning the construction of a gas
pipeline that would transport gas from Iran to Western Europe through
Armenia and Georgia, circumventing Russia by going under the Black
Sea. Iran’s gas deposits are the world’s second largest after
Russia’s, although extraction of the resource is low. Nonetheless,
Iran plans to raise its gas output to 290 billion cubic tons. Ukraine
and Iran want to form a group of experts that will work on the
project’s realisation by September. According to Siergiej Titenka,
Ukraine’s fuel and energy minister, the pipeline would have a flow
capacity of 60 billion cubic tons annually, one quarter of which would
go to Ukraine. These plans met with much displeasure from Russian gas
giant Gazprom, according to which the projects need Moscow’s
approval. – TPSA Still Losing Revenue But at Slower Rate
The TPSA telecom giant surprised the market with its second quarter
results, which were better than most analysts had expected. The
company had revenue of ZL4.59bn and posted a net profit of ZL455m,
while the average forecast among market experts was ZL4.49bn and
ZL439m respectively. TP has been witnessing a steady decline in
revenue that is still not compensated by rising revenue from mobile
services. In the second quarter, ground-based calls contributed
revenue of ZL2.48bn, compared to last year’s ZL2.79bn. Since Q2 2004,
the company has lost more than 100,000 customers, but still supplies
its services to just above 10 million. The situation in the mobile
segment is much better: revenue generated by Centertel, operator of
the Idea network, amounted to ZL1.43bn, against ZL1.2bn in the same
period of last year. TPSA’s president said yesterday that talks with
France Telecom concerning the purchase of a 34-percent stake in
Centertel have slowed down lately.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Protest against Turkey’s EU bid to take place in Prague on Friday
27.07.2005 12:01
YEREVAN (YERKIR) – A demonstration against Turkey’s entry to the
European Union will be staged in Prague on Friday by the Voice for
Europe international civic initiative, Armenpress reported, citing
Csech sourses.
Czech members of the European Parliament Josef Zieleniec and Tomas
Zatloukal (both Association of Independent Candidates, SNK) are to
take part in the protest.
Since May, the Voice for Europe has been collecting signatures for a
petition against Turkey’s EU entry in several European Union
countries, including the Czech Republic.
So far, about 30,000 people have signed the petition, including 11,000
from the Czech Republic.

MOSNEWS, Russia
July 27 2005
Moscow Woman Awarded $1,500 After Killing Would-Be Rapist
A Russian nationalist group, the Movement against Illegal
Immigration, has awarded Moscow woman Alexandra Ivannikova more than
$1,500 after she killed an ethnic Armenian who attempted to rape her,
the Izvestia newspaper reported Wednesday.
`This 50,000 ruble award was a noble outburst of the soul, which we
would have felt awkward refusing,’ Ivannikova’s husband Oleg, who
admitted receiving the money, was quoted by Izvestia as saying.
The money was raised by the movement’s supporters. The Movement
against Illegal Immigration states there are too many ethnic
minorities from the Caucasus region living in Russia, `who do not
respect Slavs enough.’ The group suggests that society should fight
this trend.
This is not the first reward Ivannikova has received. The Golden
Palace Moscow casino gave her a trip to the country of her choice, as
a prize for her `civil responsibility’.
Alexandra Ivannikova, 30, received a two-year suspended sentence
after killing ethnic Armenian Sergey Bagdasaryan, who she said had
tried to rape her in his taxi. The case received wide coverage in the
local press and among the general public, while the victim’s
ethnicity brought nationalist parties to Ivannikova’s side.
Prosecutors later asked for the sentence to be annulled, and she was
fully acquitted.

Agence France Presse
25 juillet 2005 lundi 1:57 PM GMT
L’Azerbaïdjan en mesure de lancer une nouvelle guerre au Karabakh
(Aliev)
QUBA (Azerbaïdjan) 25 juil 2005
L’Azerbaïdjan peut “à tout moment” lancer la reconquête de la
république autoproclamée du Nagorny-Karabakh grce à l’augmentation
de son budget militaire, a menacé lundi le président azerbaïdjanais
Ilham Aliev
“Nos dépenses militaires ont augmenté cette année de 76%, nous allons
créer une armée puissante et nous serons capables de libérer notre
terre à tout moment”, a déclaré le président Aliev, lors d’un
déplacement à Quba, une localité du nord de l’Azerbaïdjan.
M. Aliev, qui affronte des élections législatives le 6 novembre, a
admis que les négociations avec l’Arménie au sujet du
Nagorny-Karabakh, sous l’égide de l’OSCE, étaient importantes mais il
s’est plaint qu’elles “n’aient pas apporté de résultats”.
L’Azerbaïdjan ne reconnaît pas les autorités du Nagorny-Karabakh et
considère que la région contrôlée par des forces d’ethnie arménienne
est occupée par l’Arménie depuis le cessez-le-feu de 1994.
L’Azerbaïdjan, qui peut puiser dans son riche trésor pétrolier, a
prévu rien que pour l’année 2005 un budget de 300 millions de dollars
(environ 248 M EUR) pour ses forces armées, avait précisé auparavant
M. Aliev.
Outre la flambée des cours du brut, les recettes pétrolières du pays
sont dopées par la mise en service d’un important oléoduc avec le
soutien américain.
Cet oléoduc Bakou-Tbilissi-Ceyhan (BTC), inauguré en mai, permet
d’accéder à la Méditerranée (par la côte turque) en évitant la
Russie.
Il devrait générer jusqu’à 160 milliards de dollars (133 mds EUR) de
recettes pétrolières sur les 30 prochaines années, selon le groupe
pétrolier britannique BP, chef de file du consortium gérant le
pipeline.
La guerre du Nagorny-Karabakh de 1988 à 1994 a fait près de 25.000
morts et déplacé près d’un million de personnes, dont 250.000
Arméniens.
Les obus ne sifflent plus et les tirs le long de la ligne de
cessez-le-feu sont rares, mais la guerre des mots reste aussi vive
qu’il y a dix ans.
La population de l’enclave, quelque 145.000 personnes, est
aujourd’hui pratiquement entièrement composée d’Arméniens.
A l’époque soviétique, les deux communautés vivaient côte à côte,
parlaient souvent les deux langues et empruntaient volontiers à la
culture de l’autre.

Lraper Church Bulletin 26/07/2005
Contact: Deacon Vagharshag Seropyan
Armenian Patriarchate
TR-34130 Kumkapi, Istanbul
T: +90 (212) 517-0970, 517-0971
F: +90 (212) 516-4833, 458-1365
[email protected]
<; Pastoral Visit To The Buyukada Armenian Community ;NewsCode=N000000769&Lang=ENG On Saturday morning, 16 July, the Divine Liturgy in Armenian was celebrated at the Buyuk Island St. Pacifico Latin Catholic Church, at the wish of the Buyuk Island Armenian community. Father Tatul Anusyan led the services and preached. Community members from Buyuk Island and the other islands filled the church. Deacons Vagarsak Seropyan, Sevan Civanyan, and Hayk Koparyan served the Eucharist. Sacred hymns were sung by a group of youths successfully under the direction of Diran Allen Nergizyan. Father Tatul preached on the scripture passage Luke 11:30: "The Son of Man will be a sign to this generation." He touched on the place of Christ in our lives and described how He enlightens us day by day. After summarizing the characteristics of a believer, Father Tatul stressed that becoming informed is not sufficient. We have to carry the same light to those around us, we need to engage in charitable works, and we need at all times to praise God for what Christ has done in our lives. After the Divine Liturgy the congregation expressed its pleasure and hoped to have pastoral visits and divine services more often on Buyuk Island.

Official denies Russian grid in control of Armenia’s energy system
Mediamax news agency
22 Jul 05
Yerevan, 22 July: The head of Interenergo B.V. (affiliate of RAO UES
[Unified Energy Systems of Russia]), Mikhail Mantrov, today described
as “illusions” the claims that the Russian energy giant is in control
of the whole energy system of Armenia.
At a new conference in Yerevan today, Mantrov said that in Armenia
RAO UES owns the Sevan-Razdan Cascade hydroelectric power plant,
which provides only 10 per cent of whole energy produced in Armenia.
Despite the widespread opinion, RAO UES is not the owner of the Razdan
thermal power plant, he added.

INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION WITH SUCH AN APPROACH?
Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
19 July 05
Fundamental reform in secondary education is a vital necessity, because
all the spheres of life, social, political and economic, require a
high level of education of the people. However, with mistakes and
hastiness in this system we will lose rather than gain. Later we
will have to pay a higher price. We are now raising a generation in
a period when the gene pool of the people has been damaged because
of the war and the natural disaster, which does not allow any delay
(I mean prolonging the secondary education to 12 years) for a socially
insecure people. This is the second year that children go to school
at the age of 6 and study by textbooks meant for seven-year-old
children. Such load may harm the normal physical and mental development
of children. It should be noted that children who start school at
an earlier stage differ from other children in the negative sense of
the word. Experienced teachers will confirm this. It is not easy to
understand why there was such haste when event there were no textbooks
for the new schedule. Is it possible to achieve qualitative changes
corresponding to the international standards through groundless
and pointless quantitative changes? In all the times the system of
education has been a superstructure which has always been “sensitive”
to its economic basis. Do we possess the necessary economic basis and,
more importantly, the psychological background? Isn’t it a vital need
to set an aim of international integration in these important and
necessary spheres as well? In think, in our reality it would have been
more practical to join the Soviet school, i.e. fundamental knowledge,
with the national school, i.e. upbringing. With a model of national
education and Armenian teacher it is possible to have school graduates
corresponding to international standards. It is necessary to revise
the textbooks and change the form of examination tickets. For example,
the pointless requirement of memorizing all the dates, nicknames and
names of relatives of historical figures, because even the teacher
may not always recall all these details. This helps to develop memory
while ignoring the analytical approach to the cause and effect of
this or that historical event. By the way, the textbooks of Russian
and the programme of exams in Russian in the 8th and 10th grades are
quite good in terms of what was said above.
NAZIK NALBANDIAN. 19-07-2005

GUD VELSIGNE OS…
Azg/arm
21 July 05
God bless us…
This is the title of a documentary about Armenians of Denmark and
Armenia shot in this Scandinavian country in 2002.
The Armenian Christian Cultural Center of Denmark headed by its
president Alexander Aghabalian decided to familiarize the Danes with
Armenia, its people, culture and history.
Celebration of 1700th anniversary of Christianity in Armenia in 2001
gave the idea of the film. The first part of the film is dedicated to
the Armenian culture and history with a focus on Armenian Genocide of
1915. But the main theme of the film is the integration of Armenians
in Denmark.
The Armenian community of Denmark, greater after the collapse of
the USSR, managed not only to keep the homeland in heart but also
did everything to create a small Armenia in Copenhagen. “I wanted
to sculpt something that would remind me my home though so far away”
sculptor Armen Matinian author of “Origin” statue says.
“It cost me great efforts to get the right to serve Armenian liturgy
at the St. Andreas church in Copenhagen”, Aghabalian says, “There
is no Armenian church in Denmark, and I decided to give a chance to
compatriots to feel the breath of the homeland behind the walls of
that church. Moreover, in 1995, we managed to erect a khachkar at
the churchyard in memory of the Genocide victims”.
Many Armenians have succeeded in Denmark.
A number of Armenian scientists are doing research in cancer. “I
had to leave Armenia like many others as I had decided to get on
in science”, Mariam Grigorian says. “It’s better to be a good baker
in Denmark than a bad architect in Armenia”, Karen Kocharian says.
Sergey Azizian is considered the first violin of Denmark.
Alexander Aghabalian skillfully featured all these in the documentary
titled “God Bless Us…” that was first shown in Copenhagen. The film
helped the Danes, almost unaware of Armenia and Armenian culture,
understand who the Armenians are.
By Anna Harutyunian

Georgia to invest in gas storage tanks
By M. Alkhazashvili
The Messenger, Georgia
July 20 2005
A natural gas storage facility: Rehden, pictured here, is the largest
storage facility in Western Europe
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) is allotting USD 1
million for research into the possibilities of constructing a natural
gas storage facility in Georgia – storage tanks widely viewed as
vital for energy security.
Gas storage facilities exist in all developed countries. There are
reportedly 634 in the world, including three underground facilities
in the South Caucasus – two in Azerbaijan and one in Armenia.
Energy experts consider the construction of a gas storage facility
in Georgia a matter of urgency on the grounds that the tanks would
make Georgia’s energy supply more stable as it would be possible to
continue to supply the country with energy for several months in the
event of some interruption in imports.
Furthermore, it is argued that a storage facility would reduce gas
prices as the tanks would allow the country to import gas in the
summer when prices are lower and save it until winter.
Ongoing construction of the South Caucasus pipeline which will carry
gas from the Shah-Deniz gas fields in Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean
mean that it would be even more prosperous for Georgia to build a
storage facility, as the country will receive 5 percent of transported
gas and will be able to buy additional gas at special prices for
twenty years.
Some work has been done in preparation for construction of a storage
facility, with two abandoned oil mines in Rustavi and Ninotsminda
seen as the best locations for such a facility. The new research is
aimed at identifying which location would be better.
Saknavtobi Head Mikheil Sidamonidze says it is possible to store
at least 300 million cubic meters in the Rustavi mine and at least
750 million cubic meters in Ninotsminda. Georgia currently uses
approximately 900 million cubic meters of natural gas annually.
In addition to having the greater capacity of the two, a facility at
Ninotsminda would likely only take two years to construct, while a
storage facility at Rustavi would take five years to construct. While
the Rustavi tank would cost an estimated USD 45 million, estimates
for a facility at Ninotsminda range from USD 25 million up to USD
90 million.