Author: Chmshkian Vicken

“TURKEY HAS TO RECONSIDER ITS ARMENIAN POLICY” ILTER TURKMEN CLAIMS
Armenian-Turkish Relations
Azg Daily
August 24, 2004
By Hakob Chakrian
In one of Azg Daily’s last issues we voiced an opinion that the role of the
Turkish army will weaken as a result of changes in the National Security
Council. We mentioned that the executive power of the country will not have
the backing of the army any more. The fact that the Turkish army is deprived
of the opportunity to influence the country’s policy is beneficial for
Armenia.
It is interesting that the Turkish Hurriyet [August 7, 2004] quotes Ilter
Turkmen who said that it’s better for Turkey to improve relations with
Armenia. It is not an opinion of an ordinary citizen. He was the minister
foreign affairs of Turkey after the 1980 coup d’etat, then was ambassador to
Russia and France.
It gains more importance when we consider that Hurriyet has over 1 million
circulation and is published both in Europe and the USA. In the beginning of
his article, Turkmen mentions the pro-Armenian verdict of the lawsuit filed
by the offspring of the Genocide survivors against the American insurance
company New York Life for not compensating 20 million dollars for
insurances. He thinks it possible that the American insurance company will
force Turkey to pay the compensation and points out that it is going to be a
“compensation for the victims of the Genocide”.
Ilter Turkmen doesn’t exclude the chance that the offspring of the Genocide
survivors, including American citizens, turn to the European Court of Human
Rights and distinct countries turning to the International Court.
Considering the nature of these courts he underscores that they will barely
be able to call Turkey to account or demand compensation or even lands from
Turkey.
In other words Turkey is more interested in the fact that the court decision
may have negative political outcomes for Turkey. He writes on this point:
“Definitely the law and the politics differ. Perhaps that’s the reason why
34 American states have recognized the genocide. The same thing happened in
the parliaments of Canada and of some European countries, as well as the
European Parliament. We managed to put an end to the activity of the
Armenian lobby in the House of Representatives only by the involvement of
the US presidents. We don’t think that John Kerry, known for his sympathy
for the Armenians, will be as decisive in carrying on the same formulae
regarding the genocide.”
Ilter Turkmen goes on considering the means used by Turkey against the
international recognition of the Armenian Genocide insufficient. He
expresses his worry regarding Turkey’s membership to the EU, which might fan
the fires of the Armenians in the issue of the Genocide. Turkmen adds at the
end: “The Anti-lobby steps cannot be sufficient as Armenians have great
possibilities in the West. The Russian Diaspora of 2 million is also there.
The only preferable policy for us is delaying the solution of this issue by
means of measured but positive steps. It’s a pity that none of the Turkish
governments ever followed this policy.”
;num04082402

PRESS RELEASE
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Information Services
Address: Vagharshapat, Republic of Armenia
Contact: Rev. Fr. Ktrij Devejian
Tel: (374 1) 517 163
Fax: (374 1) 517 301
E-Mail: [email protected]
August 25, 2004
New Appointment in the Mother See
By the Pontifical Order of His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and
Catholicos of All Armenians, Very Rev. Fr. Anushavan Vardapet Jamkotchian, a
member of the Brotherhood of Holy Etchmiadzin, has been assigned as parish
priest of Saint Gregory the Illuminator Mother Cathedral of Yerevan.
Father Anushavan, having recently completed his education in the Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelms University (Bonn, Germany), has returned to the Mother
See to continue his service to the Armenian Church. Father Anushavan is a
doctoral candidate in the field of religious rights.
* * *
Very Rev. Fr. Anushavan Vardapet Jamkotchian
(baptismal name – Andranik)
Born in Vagharshapat, Armenia in 1971, he received his primary and secondary
education at Vahan Rshtuni School.
Studied in the Gevorkian Theological Seminary of Holy Etchmiadzin from
1989-1994. Defended his thesis entitled “Movses Jughayetsi’s Collection of
Philology”, and graduated from the Seminary.
In 1993, he was ordained a deacon.
He was ordained a celibate priest in 1995 by His Grace Bishop Asoghik
Aristakesian.
>From 1994-1998, he attended classes at the Komitas State Conservatory in
Yerevan. Concurrently, he was an instructor of liturgical music at the
Gevorkian Theological Seminary.
>From 1998-2000 he studied church music in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, at Halle
Protestant College.
>From 2000-2001, Father Anushavan studied German at Martin Luther University.
In 2001, he returned to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, and defended his
thesis entitled “Komitas and the Armenian Church” and was elevated to the
rank of Vardapet (Archimandrite).
Also in 2001, he studied in the School of Law of Martin Luther University in
Germany, concentrating on “Jurisprudence and the Rights of the Church”.
>From 2002 to 2004, Anushavan Vardapet studied “Church Canon Law” at the
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn, Germany.
In 2004, he defended his thesis entitled “The Basis of Rights of the
Armenian Church from the 4th through 20th Centuries”, and became a candidate
of doctoral sciences.

The New York Sun
August 16, 2004 Monday
Tempting Oil-for-Food Questions
BENNY AVNI
Last week Paul Volcker said he would investigate one famous
nonemployee of the United Nations, Kojo Annan, who happens to be the
secretary general’s son.
This is a tempting direction in the Oil-for-Food inquiry. But Mr.
Volcker might do better if instead of poking around Mr. Annan’s
family connections he reaches further back, into the less explored
Boutros-Ghali clan.
The former Fed chairman and his team of investigators are sitting on
top of thousands of boxes filled with U.N. documents, some of which
detail ties to firms devised by operators who know how to daisy-chain
companies in a way that would make true ownership all but
undetectable.
It will be some time, then, before Mr. Volcker produces any bombshell
to credibly refute or confirm what he called “a lot of smoke”:
allegations that already turned the U.N. into a metaphor epitomizing
institutional corruption.
Presenting his first quarterly report, Mr. Volcker told reporters his
priority target is the U.N. and its officials. However, since Kojo
Annan’s employer, the Geneva-based shipping inspection company
Cotecna, was a contractor with the U.N., it would also have to be
investigated.
As Cotecna noted in a statement quoted by the New York Times’ Judith
Miller last week, the younger Annan worked mostly in Nigeria and
Ghana, not in Iraq. Sure, the 1999 U.N. ditching of the British-based
Lloyd’s shipping inspectors and their replacement with Cotecna’s
smelled to the high heavens. But Mr. Volcker’s team might want to
walk the cat back to an earlier phase of the program.
When the idea for a humanitarian plan to ease suffering in
sanction-burdened Iraq was hatched at the U.N., in 1996, the
then-secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was losing favor with
the Clinton administration. He found himself embroiled in a titanic
internal struggle, which eventually was won by the Washington-backed
Kofi Annan.
In the camps that were formed among the top brass, one staunch ally
of Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s was a longtime U.N. bureaucrat named Benon
Sevan.
As an insider speculated once in a casual conversation, that alliance
might have been based on tribal kinship. Mr. Boutros-Ghali is an
Egyptian Copt – an ancient, close-knit Christian sect that has
learned how to squirrel away its acorns for those bad periods when
the Muslim majority around it turns nasty. Mr. Sevan, an Armenian
Cypriot, belongs to a similarly persecuted Mediterranean minority.
Mr. Sevan, the insider told me, was not sure then about his future in
the Annan administration. Rather than being pushed out, however, his
new assignment was to run the recently-born oil-for-food program,
which at the time looked like a dead-end job. In a few years, of
course, this program would turn into the most ambitious enterprise in
the history of the U.N. and Mr. Sevan would oversee more than $10
billion annually, almost 10 times the budget of the U.N. itself.
Mr. Sevan is now the most famous among U.N. officials who is accused
of taking Saddam’s bribes. If the allegations are true – Mr. Sevan
denies any wrongdoing – greasing the pockets of the man running
oil-for-food was one great way for the Iraqi dictator to assure that
all shenanigans in the program were overlooked.
Back in March, the Wall Street Journal’s Therese Raphael described
how millions of barrels of Iraqi oil were allegedly allocated in the
name of Mr. Sevan to a Panamanian-based trading company, Africa
Middle East Petroleum.
That company, according to the Journal, is owned and managed by a
Geneva-based oil trader named Fakhry Abdelnour, a Copt and close
relative of Mr. Boutros-Ghali.
And in one more interesting detail, Cotecna, that same company that
employs Mr. Annan’s son, was also founded by a Copt, Elie Georges
Massey.
All these ties may never lead to Mr. Boutros-Ghali, but they are
intriguing nevertheless. Did anybody on the secretary-general’s team
that devised the program, in the name of humanitarian necessity,
realize even back in the mid-1990s that it might assume such gigantic
proportions, with billions of loose dollars waiting for exploitation?
Mr. Volcker said last week that at first he would look into how the
program was “formulated and administered within the U.N.”
oil-for-food officially began during Mr. Annan’s tenure, but its
roots are in the Boutros-Ghali era. If investigators want to start at
the beginning, they might as well look there.

Washington Times
Aug 22 2004
Week in Review
By David W. Jones
Chemical attack?
There was something curiously understated about the report of an
apparent chemical attack on villagers in the Sudanese province of
Darfur, which ran on Tuesday’s front page.
For one thing, the word “chemical” was never used by any of the
villagers. They simply described in matter-of-fact terms how one day,
instead of the usual bombs, the planes dropped plastic sacks filled
with a flourlike substance that made them sick and killed their
livestock.
“I came across the story just talking to the villagers in Shegek
Karo about their experiences during the bombing,” reporter Levon
Sevunts explained in a subsequent e-mail.
“They didn’t even realize what they were telling me was extremely
important. For them, it was just another of many ways the Sudanese
government had tried to kill them.”
Mr. Sevunt’s report was the first we had seen since the Darfur
story broke into the headlines this year to suggest the Sudanese were
using chemical weapons in the conflict.
That made it a big story, but also one on which we wanted to be
very careful of our facts – especially because Mr. Sevunts, a
freelance correspondent in the region for the Toronto Star, had filed
to us only a couple of times before.
But the innocent quality of the villagers’ stories gave the story
the ring of truth, and we were impressed by the fact that Mr. Sevunts
had carefully avoided making any unsubstantiated charges. He simply
recounted the stories the villagers had told him.
We had staff reporter David R. Sands in Washington make some
additional phone calls.
He learned that the British Broadcasting Corp. had reported the
use of chemical weapons in southern Darfur in 1999, and was told by a
specialist at the International Crisis Group (ICG) that there had
been unconfirmed reports of chemical-weapon use in Sudan for a
decade.
The ICG specialist, John Prendergast, also called for an
international investigation of all such charges. At that point, we
felt we had not only solid grounds for the story, but perhaps even an
obligation to run it.

Security concerns
One thing that troubled us: Mr. Sevunts, in his original story,
said representatives of Human Rights Watch had been to the village
and taken a sample of the powder to be analyzed. But when we called
Human Rights Watch from Washington, their spokesman was not aware of
the incident.
This might just be a case of poor communications between
headquarters and the field, common enough in situations like this.
When we queried Mr. Sevunts, he provided the name of the person who
took the sample and suggested another explanation.
“I think the HRW are denying it for the same reasons I had to
hold it for several days – security,” he wrote.
“But I couldn’t hold the story any more,” he said. On his way
back, he had run into reporters from competing organizations
traveling to the same village “and I wasn’t sure whether they got the
story, too.”
“So I filed at the first opportunity I got to recharge batteries
on my laptop and close enough to the Chadian border that I knew I
could make a run for it if the Sudanese came after us.”
We also did a bit of research on Mr. Sevunts – an easy enough
matter, thanks to Google. We knew he had worked several years for the
well-regarded Montreal Gazette, but not much more.
The Google search showed that he was Russian-born, that he had
lived in Armenia for a while, and that he had some remarkable
adventures during the fighting in Afghanistan at the end of 2001.
Mr. Sevunts “was once a soldier in the former Soviet Union,” says
a “blog” from that period by Kevin Sites, a freelance television
reporter for NBC and CNN. “That is probably why he is alive today. He
knows about war. Has been shot at before.”
That sounds like just the kind of guy we like to have reporting
from a conflict zone.

-David W. Jones is the foreign editor of The Washington Times.
His e-mail address is [email protected].
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Pasadena Star-News, CA
Aug 14 2004
Boy who lost foot remains critical
PASADENA — An 8- year-old boy remained in critical condition at Los
Angeles County- USC Medical Center on Friday after being thrown from
an SUV in a rollover accident and hit by a Gold Line train Thursday,
authorities said.
The boy’s mother, Lena Khodaverdian, 41, was one of three people
killed in the crash, church officials said.
The accident occurred about 10 a.m. Thursday on the eastbound
Foothill (210) Freeway, just before the Madre Street exit. The 2003
Ford Expedition was carrying seven women and the boy, on their way to
a church picnic.
CHP investigators believe the driver swerved to avoid another vehicle
and then flipped, crashing into the center wall and ejecting at least
three of its occupants, who were not wearing seat belts. The boy
landed on the Gold Line tracks, where his foot was severed by a
train.
Members of the Armenian Brotherhood Bible Church on Washington
Boulevard in Pasadena mourned the deaths and worried about the status
of the injured throughout the day Friday.
Alice Basmadjian, 82, who died in the crash, was remembered as a
woman who was always smiling, according to friends at the church. Her
funeral may be held Wednesday, church officials said.
Church secretary Azniv Ailanjian was uncertain about the condition of
the other injured women. Two of the victims remained hospitalized and
two were released Thursday from Huntington Hospital, she said.
Pregnant woman dies in crash; husband hurt
GLENDALE — A crash Thursday on the Ventura (134) Freeway claimed the
lives of a Pasadena woman and her unborn child and seriously injured
her husband, CHP officials said.
Barbara Scollard, 40, died in the accident, and her husband, Craig,
was injured, authorities said. Barbara Scollard was pronounced dead
at the scene of the accident, which happened at 1:48 p.m. Thursday in
the westbound lanes just east of the Glendale Freeway.
Unknown lumps found on Jupiter satellite
LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE — Nearly a year after NASA intentionally
crashed its Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter’s atmosphere, researchers
from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and UCLA have detected irregular
lumps, which may be rock formations, beneath the frozen surface of
Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, from data it collected more than
seven years ago.
They report their findings in the current issue of the journal
Science.
The lumps sit in the interior of the icy satellite, with no visible
features associated with them appearing on the surface. The
scientists believe this means near surface ice most be strong enough
to support the bulging masses from sinking to the bottom of the ice
for billions of years. However, the same effect could be caused by
rock piles beneath the ice, according to a written statement prepared
by JPL.
“They could also be in a layer of mixed ice and rock below the
surface with variations in the amount of rock,’ said John Anderson, a
scientist at JPL and the paper’s lead author, in the written
statement. “There are many possibilities, and we need to do more
studies.’
The scientists stumbled on the reported results when studying
measurements of Ganymede’s gravity field during Galileo’s second
flyby of the moon in 1996.
Arcadia police join anti-drinking campaign
ARCADIA — The city and its Police Department will participate in the
national “You Drink and Drive, You Lose’ campaign from Aug. 27 to
Sept. 12.
The crackdown is the first nationwide effort since all states adopted
0.08 blood alcohol level content as the standard for impaired
driving.
During this period, the Police Department will establish a checkpoint
and increase the amount of patrolling in the area.
To report impaired drivers, call the police department at (626)
574-5150.
Concert in the Parks finale set Aug. 31
PASADENA — The finale for the free Concert in the Parks series Aug.
31 will feature the Great American Swing Band at the Levitt Pavilion
in Memorial Park.
The band will perform hits from the 1940s big band era, including
music from Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman among others.
For more information, call the Pasadena Senior Center at (626)
795-4331 or visit
Orchestra to honor Lloyd Webber, Puccini
ARCADIA — The California Philharmonic will perform “Andrew Lloyd
Webber Meets Puccini’ on Aug. 31 at Festival on the Green at the Los
Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.
The orchestra will perform music that includes Webber’s “Jesus Christ
Superstar,’ “Evita,’ “Phantom of the Opera,’ in addition to Puccini’s
“Tosca’ and “Turandot.’
The evening begins with preconcert activities at 5:30 p.m. The
concert begins at 7:30.
Tickets are free, but reservations must be made by Aug. 17 to Jerry
Rosengren at (626) 292-1400.
The arboretum is at 301 N Baldwin Ave.
Chorus to present concert and social
ARCADIA — The Verdugo Hills Showtime Chorus invites the public to
its sixth annual ice cream social, “Pick Yourself Up,’ on Aug. 22 at
the Arcadia Community Center.
The event begins at 2 p.m. and will feature regional award-winning
quartets in addition to performances by the Verdugo Hills Showtime
Chorus.
The social costs $12 per person and includes ice cream and coffee.
Group discounts are available.
For tickets or for more information, visit
or call (877) SING-OUT or Mary Dakan at
(818) 848-2467.
City of Hope plans informational luncheon
DUARTE — The City of Hope will host a luncheon and discussion on
blood, platelet and bone marrow donations Aug. 26 at the Old
Spaghetti Factory.
Kevin Collins, director of Blood and Platelet Recruitment Programs
Development, will speak about the City of Hope Cancer Center’s most
recent developments in research and treatment and the significance of
donations.
The event will also feature the testimony of a bone marrow transplant
survivor who has depended on blood and platelet donors.
Tickets cost $13.50. To make a reservation or for more information,
call (626) 256-4673, ext. 62347. The Old Spaghetti Factory is at 1431
Buena Vista Ave, Duarte.
To donate blood or platelets, please call (626) 471-7171.

RESULTS OF COMMAND-STAFF TRAININGS OF NKR DEFENSE ARMY TO BE SUMMED UP
ON AUGUST 12
YEREVAN, August 12 (Noyan Tapan). The third stage of the command-staff
trainings of the NKR Defense Army was held with the attraction of 100%
of troops through reinforcement on Aghdam firing ground on August
10. The trainigs were held with three stages with the application of
mighty military equipment.
Military sub-units were brought to fighting trim on the first stage
that started on August 3, preparation for defensive actions was held
on the second stage, and troops passed to the offensive on the third
stage. A tactical scheme was put on the third stage, i.e. to destroy
the weapon emplacements of the supposed enemy. Military sub-units,
repulsing an attack of the enemy, undertook counter-attack, occupied
new positions and took soldiers of the enemy prisoner.
It should be mentioned that for the last time such trainings were held
on September 4, 2002. NKR President Arkady Ghoukassian, NKR Prime
Minister Anushavan Danielian, RA Minister of Defense Serge Sargsian,
Colonel-General Mikael Harutiunian, Chief of the General Staff of the
RA Armed Forces, were present at the trainings. Mikael Harutiunian
estimated the fighting trim of the NKR Defense Army as “quite
good”. According to him, the great work on the building of the
engineering-technical constructions has been carried out. The military
review was held at the end of the trainings, during which a number of
military servicemen were awarded with diplomas, as well as with
valuable presents. The results of the trainings will be summed up on
August 12.

MetroWestDailyNews.com
>From Iraq tour of duty to the RNC
By Michael Kunzelman / News Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
ASHLAND — When John Merguerian returned home to Ashland from a yearlong
tour of duty in Iraq, many of his friends and neighbors assumed the war and
its horrors had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth.
They could not have been more wrong.
Merguerian, an Army reservist who served as an Arabic linguist in a
civil affairs battalion, said countless Iraqis told him in their native
tongue that their life is much better since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s
regime.
“Life is still tough for these Iraqis, but, that said, at least they
have some freedom now,” he said. “I feel we’ve done some good. There are
some positive things going on over there.”
Not only does Merguerian support the war, but he also looks forward to
playing a small part in trying to re-elect his commander in chief. The
30-year-old is heading to New York City this month to serve as an alternate
delegate at the Republican National Convention in New York City.
“I wanted to give the public a different perspective on the war in
Iraq,” he said.
Merguerian was recruited by Robert Semonian, a member of the
Massachusetts Republican State Committee. They both attend St. James
Armenian Church in Watertown.
“I felt that he would have an important message to give people, as
someone who served in Iraq,” Semonian explained. “He’s a young person, very
articulate, honest and straight-forward.”
Merguerian, a 1992 graduate of Ashland High School, became active in
Republican politics and volunteered for several GOP campaigns while he
attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where he majored in
Arabic and Middle Eastern political science.
When he enlisted in the Army in 1997, his language skills quickly made
him a valuable asset. In Iraq, he served in the security intelligence
section of the civil affairs battalion.
He performed a wide range of tasks, “everything from doing humanitarian
work to collecting intelligence,” he said.
Merguerian admitted to being scared when he arrived in Iraq in April
2003 during a phase of the war he describes as the “looting period.”
“Everything was out of control,” he said. “Conditions weren’t good. We
didn’t know what was going to happen.”
But Merguerian said he always enjoyed his work with the Iraqi people, a
statement that often surprises his friends and neighbors.
“They said the media portrayed the war as posing a constant threat of
violence for the troops, with no diplomacy or communication between the
Americans and the people in the neighborhoods,” he recalled.
Merguerian said many of the younger soldiers, especially those whose
tours of duty have been extended, are “very upset with the Bush
administration.”
But he has no qualms about supporting Bush over John Kerry.
“When I listened to Kerry’s speech (at the Democratic National
Convention), I didn’t hear him lay down a plan for what he wants to do
post-war in Iraq,” Merguerian said.
Merguerian’s father, Haig, is proud of his son’s war service. But he
cannot say the same about his son’s Republican credentials.
“He’s on the other side,” he said with a laugh.
A strong Kerry supporter, Haig Merguerian has been a registered
Democrat ever since immigrated to the United States from Armenia in 1967.
“I don’t know why he’s still supporting the Republicans,” Haig
Merguerian said. “But I’m not going to tell him not to go (to the
convention). He can do whatever he wants.”

CEREMONY OF REQUIEM HELD IN YERABLUR ON AUGUST 7 IN CONNECTION WITH
DAY OF MEMORY OF PERISHED MEMBERS OF ARMENIAN LIBERATION SECRET ARMY
YEREVAN, August 11 (Noyan Tapan). The ceremony of requiem was held in
Yerablur on August 7 in connection with the Day of Memory of the
perished members of the Armenian Liberation Secret Army (ASALA).
The ceremony was organized by the “Nemesis” patriotic organization of
revival. On 7 August 1982, freedom fighters Zohrab Sargsian and Levon
Ekmekchian attacked “Esempoga” international airport of Ankara,
demanding that Turkey should recognize the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
During fights lasting about 3 hours, when ammunition were nearing the
end, Zohrab Sargsian committed suicide, and Levon Ekmekchian, being
heavily injuried, was taken prisoner. The Turkish court sentenced him
to death by hanging. According to ASALA member Zaven Petrosian, it is
the memory of these two freedom fighters that August 7 is announced
the Day of Memory of those perished in the up-to-date armed conflict.
According to him, the youth of all the communities of the Diaspora
inspired with the attack of the Turkish airport by Zohrab Sargsian and
Levon Ekmekchian started struggling for the recognition of the
Armenian Genocide and drew the attention of the international
community to the problem of the Armenian Cause (Hay Dat).

SHARE OF SPHERE OF SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN RA GDP MAKES 40% IN
FIRST HALF-YEAR
YEREVAN, August 6 (Noyan Tapan). According to the preliminary data,
the share of the sphere of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in
RA GDP made about 40% in the first half of 2004. Over 4,700 new
entities of SME with about 11,000 jobs were registered during the
indicated period. RA Minister of Trade and Economic Development Karen
Chshmaritian said during the August 6 press conference that a total of
over 70 mln drams of guarantee sums (about 127,000 dollars) were
allocated to 2,500 companies with the purpose of contribution to the
sphere of the small and medium enterprises. 60% of these sums fell on
the regions, which is explained by the fact of the absence of the
subject of security under credit. The RA Minister also said that the
SME Coordination Council was established with the purpose of the
coordination of programs on the improvement and development of the
policies in the indicated sphere. Representatives of the World Bank,
USAID, UNDP, OSCE are within this Council.

ArmenPress
Aug 6 2004
PM RECEIVED SYRIAN MINISTER OF ECONOMY AND TRADE
YEREVAN, AUGUST 6, ARMENPRESS: Armenian PM Andranik Margarian
received yesterday Syrian Minister of Economy and Trade Ghassan
al-Rifai and the delegation headed by him who are in Armenia to
participate in the third session of Armenian-Syrian intergovernmental
joint committee.
According to government press services, PM noted that Armenia
attaches great importance to boosting relations with Syria as part of
its policy in Middle East.. He also said, that despite of joint
efforts to develop economic and cultural- scientific cooperation, its
size is far from being satisfactory. He therefore underscored
Armenian-Syrian intergovernmental sessions to which Ghassan al-Rifai
is a co-chair. Syrian Minister of Trade and Economy told the Armenian
PM about the pace of work of the committee’s third session noting
that a number of documents have been signed in the field of health,
communication, tourism and others. Attaching importance to their
implementation, the minister told that the Syrian side intends to
create a working group which will monitor it.
The Armenian PM and minister Ghassan al-Rifai expressed readiness
to increase size of trade turnover in the near future. The sides also
praised several cooperation projects in the fields of education and
culture as part of agreements in previous intergovernmental sessions.
The sides underscored the need for exchange of information through
such entities as Armenian Development Agency, Armenian Chamber of
Commerce and Industry and respective bodies in Syria.
Armenian PM thanked the Syrian side for providing wheat and potato
seeds as an aid and as part of cooperation in the field of
agriculture. At the end of the meeting the sides voiced their hope
that the visit of Syrian PM Naji Utri will give a new boost to
Armenian-Syrian relations.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress