Author: Chavushian

Russia & CIS Business and Financial Newswire
January 15, 2008 Tuesday 10:57 AM MSK

Armenia’s Pure Iron raises ferromolybdenum output 10% in 2007

YEREVAN Jan 15

Pure Iron Works increased production of ferromolybdenum by 10.2%
year-on-year to 2,845.4 tonnes in 2007, an executive at the company
told Interfax.

In value, production of ferromolybdenum grew 9.1% to 37.432 billion
dram.

However, production of pure molybdenum dropped 20.1% in volume and
18.3% in value to 389 tonnes and 8.229 billion dram.

The company also produced 85.8 kg of rhenium salt with 64% rhenium
content, worth 62.4 million dram, up from 8.5 kg worth 1.44 million
dram last year.

Pure Iron increased exports of ferromolybdenum by 7.7% to 38.339
billion dram, while reducing exports of pure molybdenum by 21.6% to
8.335 billion dram. The company also exported 103 kg of rhenium salt
worth 125 million dram; this product was not exported in 2006.

Germany’s Cronimet Mining owns 51% of Pure Iron, and the remaining
shares are owned by Armenian residents.

Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
January 17, 2008 Thursday

Transplant patience pays off

by Jeff Raymond, The Oklahoman

Jan. 17–Cutting months from the wait to receive a liver and having a
longtime acquaintance in the operating room convinced a California
surgeon to bring his father to Oklahoma City for a liver transplant.

Dr. Avo Artinyan trained as a surgeon under Dr. Nicolas Jabbour, who
now oversees the Integris Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Institute. Jabbour
operated Jan. 9 on 66-year-old Ludvik Artinyan, a Los Angeles family
practice doctor from Armenia.

Avo Artinyan, who is halfway through a surgical oncology fellowship
in Los Angeles, estimated his father would have waited at least
another six months to have a transplant, had he stayed in California.

Transplant patients in Oklahoma typically spend less time waiting for
livers than the national average. Because patients may be listed on
multiple organ waiting lists, Ludvik Artinyan’s chances of receiving
a liver were better if he came to Oklahoma.

Half of the patients placed on the liver waiting list in the state
receive a transplant within approximately eight months of being
listed; nationally, it is double that time.

Joel Newman, a spokesman for the United Network for Organ Sharing,
said the organization’s policies allowed patients to list at more
than one transplant site.

However, he said, "It’s very uncommon that people list at more than
two."

To qualify, patients must meet the sometimes-differing criteria of
individual transplant centers.

Although listing at two centers served by the same organ procurement
organization such as Oklahoma’s LifeShare Transplant Donor Services
won’t improve a patient’s transplant chances, odds can improve by
registering elsewhere because organs may become available sooner.

A growing tumor on Ludvik Artinyan’s liver made waiting ill-advised;
had the tumor grown more, he would have been ineligible for a
transplant.

His MELD (model for end-stage liver disease) score, a way of ranking
transplant candidates according to the severity of their illnesses,
wasn’t high enough to be at the top of the list in Los Angeles.
Organs are in greater demand there because of a dense population that
is more prone to liver disease because of its ethnic makeup.

Artinyan knew he wanted to bring his father to the Oklahoma-Texas
area, and asked colleagues about where to go.

They suggested Jabbour.

Doctor is a big factor

Artinyan said the greatest compliment one surgeon can pay another is
to have him or her operate on a loved one.

"He’s one of only a few people I would have let operate on my dad,"
Avo Artinyan said.

He called Jabbour "gifted," a surgeon who operates quickly but
precisely and a challenging teacher while at the University of
Southern California.

"I would definitely recommend other people come out here," Avo
Artinyan said, calling the transplant center "a little hidden jewel."

The center’s success rate, and its dedicated post-transplant ICU and
organ-harvesting team — most transplant centers have different teams
for different organs — helped sway Avo Artinyan. Time is of the
essence when harvesting organs, and different teams often have
competing interests in getting their organs out first, he said.

Ludvik Artinyan has been in Oklahoma City since Nov. 27 waiting for a
new liver. He likely will leave the hospital today. He will remain in
the city for a week or two and then return to California.

Trusting his son

As for coming to Oklahoma, he said he trusted his son and had heard
of Jabbour through colleagues.

"They said he has excellent technique, very honest, good man," Ludvik
Artinyan said.

Jabbour said the center’s organ-harvesting team impressed a review
team recently. He said having his former student choose his hospital
was both a personal choice and "an educated guess."

"Educated people will find out about our program and will seek us
out," he predicted, adding that he currently has patients from
California and Alabama who await transplants.

Although the nation’s pre-eminent transplant centers doubtless
provide good care, they’re not the only ones.

"This can be done locally by some of the best physicians," Jabbour
said.

Baptist surgeons perform about 60 liver transplants a year.

Arts & Book Review
January 18, 2008
First Edition

Where memory becomes legend;

Alev Adil
Skylark Farm By Antonia Arslan, trans. Geoffrey Brock Atlantic £12.99
(275pp) £11.69 (free p&p) from 0870 079 8897

BOOKS; Pg. 26

It is 1915, and Sempad the prosperous pharmacist and his family are
excitedly making preparations for his brother Yerwant’s visit after
decades abroad. The Pharmacie Hayastane, named after the lost
homeland of the Armenians, is a "beacon of prog-ress and
civilisation" in their little Anatolian town. The Arslanian family
are busy putting the finishing touches to Skylark Farm, their new
country house, with tennis and croquet lawns and rose-covered
pergolas, while in Italy Yerwant dreams of building a villa nearby
where he can retire.

This is a bucolic paradise, yet from the first we know that disaster
looms; most of the family will perish. The reader has already met
little Henriette, three in 1915, as an old lady accompanying the
author to her first name-day church service in Italy. Arslan’s first
novel is also a family memoir, and bears witness to the Armenian
massacre that wiped out so many of her forebears in Turkey.

Her imagined history is frequently mystical. Some have had
premonitions, "smelled blood in the air, caught the scent of evil" or
had visions of the archangel surrounded by evil fire. The
paterfamilias, Hamparzum, sees the horsemen of the Apocalypse as his
toddler grandson feeds him grapes on his deathbed. He entrusts the
child to the Virgin as he dies.

The atrocities they suffer are hard to read, both because of the
horrific events and Arslan’s purple prose. Leslie is "flung against
the wall, where his small round head smashes like a ripe coconut,
spraying blood and brain across the delicate floral designs." Carnage
becomes religious kitsch, as when Hripsime sees her baby skewered on
a bayonet, "the joyous soul of her little Vartan hesitantly trying
out his new wings".

Leaving aside literary quality, Arslan’s novel raises compelling
questions about the traumatic historical events that shaped our
inherited identity – here, where memory becomes third-generation
legend. The Armenian massacres are said to have served as a model for
Hitler’s subjugation of Poland. Here the collective memory of the
Holocaust serves as the model for imagining the Armenian genocide.
Arslan inappropriately attributes Nazi ideologies to the Ottomans.
Setrak the baker becomes a sub-human collaborator with the Kurdish
guards. Arslan calls him "a capo": I read this to mean kapo, a term
borrowed from Nazi concentration camps. This was the only moment
Geoffrey Brock’s translation offered anything less than lucid
clarity.

The narrative has echoes of Schindler’s Ark. Ismene, a wily Greek and
Nazim, a Turkish beggar, save the survivors. Nazim is no Schindler,
though, compelled by greed as much as remorse. There’s little hope
for redemption or reconciliation here, in the face of an inherited,
implacable grief.

"Banants" representa Armenia at the Cup of CIS and Baltic States

armradio.am
19.01.2008 14:50

The opening ceremony of the Cup of CIS and Baltic States took place in
Saint Petersburg today.

Armenia is represented at the tournament by `Banants’ of Yerevan, the
vice-champion of Armenia. The Armenian footballers are included in the
same group with `Dinamo’ (Kiev), `BATE’ (Belarus) and `Pakhtakor’ of
Tashkent.

SOME POINTS IN AGREEMENT ON KARABAKH DO NOT CORRESPOND TO THE INTERESTS OF THE PEOPLE OF KARABAKH
Naira Hayrumyan

KarabakhOpen
18-01-2008 13:13:46

The visit of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs to Karabakh ended. It will
be possible to judge about its results if the co-chairs return to Baku
where they had visited before Yerevan and Stepanakert. Officials in
Baku stated the co-chairs promised to return to Baku if a positive
result is achieved.

With regard to the basic principles which the co-chairs said to
have systemized and extended to the parties, there is hardly any
positive result.

After the meeting with the co-chairs President Bako Sahakyan said
some points of the agreement are not in the interests of Karabakh. And
since the points of the agreement count about ten, it turns out that
no agreement has been reached on the basic principles.

Although the Russian co-chair Yuri Merzlyakov declined to say which
points were not agreed, ostensibly the Armenian side and Karabakh
disagree to the idea of return of territories around the former
Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region and the refugees, and a referendum
to be held in an indefinite period.

Earlier the Armenian minister of foreign affairs Vardan Oskanyan
had told journalists that he had met with the people of Karabakh
who had told him they agree with the basic issues. Apparently, the
Armenian minister meant his only meeting with the representatives
of the Karabakh society over the past decade, which happened two
years ago at Artsakh State University. It was immediately after the
release of the ICG reports which spelled out for the first time the
ideas about territories and refugees. At that time there was a hail
of questions how the minister imagines life in Karabakh without a
security area, safe communication with Armenia and a fast-changing
ethnic and demographic situation. The minister was also asked what he
means by saying "Karabakh". The Armenian minister said "the territory
of former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region."

Since then, however, Karabakh has adopted its Constitution which sets
down that NKR is the state within its present borders which has nothing
to do with the NKAR. And the president of Karabakh is the guarantor
of the territorial integrity and security of the country. Perhaps
President Bako Sahakyan proceeded from this to spell out his stance
on the basic issues, noting that some of them are not in the interests
of the NKR people.

The NKR president made another symptomatic statement about the
participation of Karabakh in the talks. The necessity for participation
has been discussed for a long time, but this time the president did not
speak about the involvement of Karabakh but about the future role of
Armenia. He said Armenia must also participate in the talks, thereby
underlining that the Karabakh issue has been solved. Apparently the
president has had a talk with the Armenian government about this, and
if earlier Yerevan did not insist on proposals on the participation
of Karabakh, now he has apparently changed its stance.

And the third circumstance. For the first time in the past few years
the co-chairs took part in the monitoring of the line of contact. The
U.S. co-chair Matthew Bryza said in answer to the question why that
they wanted to do it for a long time. And he added a sacramental phrase
that a good mediator should know about the situation at the line of
contact. Without knowing the real reason for the participation of
the co-chairs in the monitoring, we only note that Bryza’s statement
should be conveyed to Ambassador Peter Semneby, Lord Russell Johnston,
those innumerable officials who prepare reports, proposals, make
evaluations and even solutions regarding the Karabakh issue but do
not bother to arrive in Karabakh and meet with the society of Artsakh
at the state university at least once to hear questions which do not
require an answer.

HAYPOST MEMBER OF POSTEUROPE

Panorama.am
20:51 17/01/2008

PostEurope (European state post operators association) held a union
in Krakov, Poland, and HayPost was elected to be the 45th member of
the union. Note that Armenia is the first member from the Southern
Caucasus. HayPost officially signed and accepted its membership in
the union.

The mission of PostEurope is to create optimized post operators and
post service in Europe and to contribute to the cooperation among
its members. It is aimed to present global European Post industry.

B. FASSIER: DOCUMENT PRESENTED TO PRESIDENTS BEST PROPOSAL

Panorama.am
20:49 17/01/2008

Today Bernard Fassier, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairman held a meeting
with the journalists in Yerevan. He mentioned that the document
presented to the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan is the best
proposal for the mutual concession.

He said that there are no dark points in the document which could
mislead the sides or be more acceptable and profitable for the
one. Fassier mentioned that the co-chairmen take into consideration the
opinions of the both presidents. But they also mention some principles
which are common should be followed in this stage of the negotiations.

M. Bryza, the American co-chairman said that the presidents have
several opinions and principles in common as presented in Madrid.

Note that the co-chairmen visited NKR and met with the president,
tomorrow they are going to return back to Baku and meet with the
president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev.

U.S. TO CONTINUE EFFORTS AIMED AT SETTLEMENT OF ARMENIAN-TURKISH RELATIONS

Noyan Tapan
Jan 17 2007

YEREVAN, JANUARY 17, NOYAN TAPAN. During the January 17 meeting,
the Armenian foreign minister Vartan Oskanian and the U.S. Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza discussed issues on
the agenda of bilateral cooperation. They expressed satisfaction
at the high level of Armenia-U.S. dialog. In particular, Armenia’s
contribution to international peacekeeping operations in Iraq and
Kosovo was underlined, and the possibility of involvement of the RA
in Afghanistan was considered.

M. Bryza briefly presented the results of the recent visit of
the Turkish president to the U.S, particularly, the attitudes to
settlement of Armenian-Turkish relations, which both sides expressed
during this visit. M. Bryza restated that the U.S. administration
intends to continue its efforts in order to ensure the settlement of
relations between Armenia and Turkey as quickly as possible.

According to the RA MFA Press and Information Department, the sides
also spoke about the upcoming presidential elections in Armenia,
attaching importance of holding free and fair elections in the country.

DID SAMAST MURDER HRANT DINK NOT ALONE?

PanARMENIAN.Net
17.01.2008 16:32 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The murderer of Agos weekly editor-in-chief Hrant
Dink may not have been alone before and after committing the crime,
the Milliyet daily reported.

After Ogun Samast’s pictures were published, an unnamed person
called the Pelitli Gendarmerie in the Black Sea province of Trabzon
and reported that he knew Samast, where he lived and worked and his
father’s name, said the daily.

But although the phone call was made Jan. 20, a day after the murder,
it was filed nine days later by the gendarmerie. The caller said,
he ran away from Trabzon to Istanbul with his friends, committed the
murder there.

Although Samast said he was alone in planning and committing the
crime, that person’s call says he headed for Istanbul with his
friends. Suspect and informant, Erhan Tuncel, in his testimony had also
implied Samast was not alone. Coskun Igci, uncle of the suspect Yasin
Hayal charged with inciting the murder, reported to two gendarmerie
stations that Hayal would murder Hrant Dink.

The trial of the police officials who did not take any action after
the report will start Jan. 22.

ARMENIA RANK IMPROVES IN HERITAGE FOUNDATION REPORT

ARMENPRESS
Jan 16 2007

YEREVAN, JANUARY 16, ARMENPRESS: Armenia has significantly improved its
standing as a free economy moving from 32nd place in 2006 to 28th place
in 2007, according to a report released by the Heritage Foundation.

Hong Kong, which prides itself on its laissez-faire economic policy,
was ranked the world’s freest economy for a 14th straight year by
the US based Heritage Foundation.

Half of the world’s top 20 freest economies are in Europe, led by
Ireland in third place. Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Denmark
follow just behind and financial reform in Western Europe is being
accelerated by liberalization and tax cuts in East European countries
like Estonia, which was ranked 12th.

The United States fell to 5th place from 4th last year, and was set
back by relatively high tax rates following tax cuts in other advanced
economies and by government spending amounting to more than a third
of gross domestic product.

The annual survey published by the Wall Street Journal, ranks 157
countries and territories. The survey gauges the level of government
interference in the economy and ranks countries based on scores in such
categories as business, trade and investment freedoms; protection of
property rights; freedom from corruption, and free movement of labor.

Russia has been ranked no. 134 as a repressed economy, one place
below Ukraine, which was labeled a "mostly unfree economy."