Author: Ekmekjian Janet

IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER BELIEVES THAT THE ANNUAL VOLUME OF ARMENIAN-IRANIAN TRADE TURNOVER CAN BE MADE $1BLN

Mediamax, Armenia
July 20 2007

Yerevan, July 20 /Mediamax/. The session of the Armenian-Iranian
Intergovernmental Commission under the Chairmanship of the Armenian
Minister of Energy Armen Movsisian and the Minister of Foreign Affairs
of Iran Manouchehr Mottaki, is in process in Yerevan today.

Mediamax reports that, launching the session, Armen Movsisian recalled
that on March 19 of 2007 the launching of the Iran-Armenia gas-pipeline
took place in the presence of the presidents of the two countries,
"which became a historical event, opening a new page in the bilateral
relations".

Armen Movsisian said that Intergovernmental Commission "carries out
purposeful and productive work, the results of which are satisfying
and encouraging".

Manouchehr Mottaki informed that he is getting ready to sign a
bilateral agreement on establishing a free-trade regime between
Armenia and Iran.

"If in 2005 the trade turnover between our states made $180mln, in
2006 the same index exceeded $200mln, however, the given volume cannot
satisfy us, since it does not correspond to the existing potential",
Iranian Foreign Minister stated. According to him, "this year we need
to make the given index at least $500mln, although the experts note
that there is possibility of reaching the volume of $1bln".

Manouchehr Mottaki welcomed the signing of the agreement on joint
construction of the HPS on river Araks, which took place this spring,
and the held talks on building oil-processing factory in Armenia
with the participation of Russia, as well as the work on studying
the possibilities of establishing a railroad communication between
the two countries.

ARMENIAN POLICE TO AUCTION OFF ‘EXCLUSIVE’ LICENSE PLATES
By Shakeh Avoyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
July 19 2007

New owners of expensive cars will now be able to legally buy license
plates with their preferred numbers, instead of using their government
connections or paying kickbacks, the Armenian government announced
on Thursday.

The government approved the measure in an apparent bid to end
widespread corruption and nepotism in the distribution of what many
wealthy Armenians regard as a badge of prestige.

Their luxury cars typically have license plates with three or more
repeating and easy-to-remember numbers. In fact, some of the country’s
wealthiest businessmen have effectively monopolized entire number
combinations and variations for their extended families and closest
associates. Their motorcades consist of SUVs with virtually identical
five-digit plates.

Obtaining so-called "gold" numbers is believed to have required,
at least until now, high-level government or police connections and,
more importantly, hefty informal payments to senior police officers.

Local motorists say the most prestigious of them have cost as much
as $2,000 or even more.

The government decision, effective from September 1, is clearly
supposed to end the practice and make sure that the hefty sums end
up in the state budget. The Armenian traffic police will now have
to hold special auctions for the coveted license plates. Ministers
instructed the police to officially define "gold" number combinations,
classify them into several categories and set their price ranges within
a month. Officials said information on all exclusive license plates
put up for sale will have be posted on the police website before the
planned auctions.

Ishkhan Ishkhanian, the chief of the traffic police, already predicted
the starting price of the most expensive category: 1.2 million drams
($3,500). He said he thinks there will be no lack of people willing
to pay an even higher price.

"I can tell from my experience that we Armenians have some attachment
to numbers such dates of birth, dates of marriage," Ishkhanian told
reporters. "And I’m not talking about a particular segment of the
population. A large number of our citizens really care about numbers."

GOODS TURNOVER BETWEEN ARMENIA AND IRAN HAS SERIOUS POTENTIAL TO RISE

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
July 20 2007

YEREVAN, July 20. /ARKA/. The indices of goods turnover between
Armenia and Iran are not so high yet and have serious chances for
rise. The RA President’s press service reported that Armenia’s
President Robert Kocharyan and Iran’s Foreign Minister, Co-Chair of
the Armenian-Iranian Interstate Commission on coordinating bilateral
communication Manouchechr Mottaki came to this conclusion during
their today meeting.

Mottaki who participates in the work of the Interstate Commission
said that Iran’s President Mahmuda Ahmadinezada sends his warmest
regards. Pointing out the readiness of both countries to develop
cooperation in different spheres, the sides noted that the high
level of Armenian-Iranian political relations find their reflection
in the economy.

Minister Mottaki shortly presented the work of the Commission and
pointed out that it differs by profound discussions of a number
of important economic programs. He said that at present a number
of basic programs in the energy and transport spheres are in the
discussion process.

The seventh session of the Armenian-Iranian Interstate Commission on
coordinating bilateral communication launched in Yerevan on Friday.

The issues connected with the sphere of energy, ecology, healthcare,
rural economy, labor and social affairs, transport and communications,
trade and economy, science, education and culture are planned to
be discussed during the session. Besides, the issues connected
mass media, insurance, banking activity and legal problems will be
considered.

ARMENIA MUSIC FEATURED AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL

Valley Sun, CA
/entertainment/lap-armenia0719.txt
July 19 2007

The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and KCRW present Spirit of
Armenia! on Sunday, July 29, at the Hollywood Bowl. This performance
is part of the Sunday evening performances that comprise the 2007 KCRW
World Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. This first-ever night completely
dedicated to Armenian music and culture features renowned Armenian
artists, and the colorful costumes and dancing that symbolize the
spirit Armenian. This evening’s host is Tom Schnabel, KCRW personality
and the Philharmonic’s Program Advisor for World Music.

Spirit of Armenia! brings together a large group of distinguished
local and international Armenian artists. Acclaimed leaders of modern
Armenian pop music, Adiss, Andy, Silva Hakobyan and Sako, make their
Hollywood Bowl debuts. Musician and composer Djivan Gasparyan performs
Armenian folk music playing the duduk, the traditional woodwind
instrument of Armenia. Gasparyan is a master of the duduk, having
dedicated over 50 years of his life to studying the instrument. Winds
of Passion, comprised of some of the most accomplished duduk players
in the world today, performs as a duduk quartet, the first of its
kind. Young tenor Hovhannes Shahbazyan sings Armenian traditional
folk and gousan music, and classical pianist and composer Vatche
Mankerian also performs a specially arranged composition of Armenian
folk and classical repertoire. Los Angeles-based ensemble, Element
Band, draws inspiration from widespread and multicultural sources,
resulting in a unique Armenian "folk-fusion" sound. In the second
half, conductor Roma Kanyan leads a special band created for this
Spirit of Armenia! program.

Zvartnots Dance Ensemble and Vartan & Siranoush Gevorkian Dance
Ensemble, dressed in rich, colorful costumes, perform high-energy
choreography to both traditional and contemporary Armenian music.

Other 2007 KCRW World Festival performances include Reggae Night
VI with Burning Spear, Sly & Robbie and The Taxi Gang with Horace
Andy and Cherine Anderson on Aug. 12; Macy Gray, Zap Mama, and the
Brazilian Girls on Aug. 26; and Underworld on Sept. 9. The Hollywood
Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. in Hollywood.

Tickets are on sale now at the Hollywood Bowl Box Office or by calling
Ticketmaster at (213) 480-3232, at all Ticketmaster outlets or online
at HollywoodBowl.com. For general information or to request a brochure,
call (323) 850-2000.

VOTING IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION UNDER WAY IN DISPUTED NAGORNO-KARABAKH REGION

The Associated Press
Published: July 19, 2007

YEREVAN, Armenia: The Armenian-controlled breakaway region of
Nagorno-Karabakh is holding a presidential election Thursday amid
a rumbling dispute with Azerbaijan over the mountainous enclave’s
unrecognized independence.

Pollsters and analysts say former security chief Bako Saakian tops
the list of five candidates campaigning to replace the incumbent
Arkady Ghukasian, who is ineligible to run after two five-year terms
in office.

Saakian, 47, headed Nagorno-Karabakh’s security service since 2001,
resigning in June to stand in the election. He is running as an
independent and is backed by the Armenian government in Yerevan.

This is the fourth presidential election in the impoverished territory
inside Azerbaijan that has been controlled by Armenian and ethnic
Armenian forces since a shaky 1994 cease-fire ended one of the
bloodiest conflicts that followed the Soviet collapse.

The six-year war killed 30,000 people and drove more than 1 million
from their homes, including many of the region’s ethnic Azeris. Today,
it remains one of the region’s "frozen" conflicts.

Azerbaijan, which has rejected the vote as having no legal meaning,
is still at loggerheads with Armenia despite more than a decade
of coaxing from international mediators led by the United States,
Russia and France to resolve the region’s status.

No country has recognized the independence of the mostly agricultural
region of 146,000 people, which has faced a steady brain drain and
dire economic problems despite financial aid from Armenia and the
Armenian diaspora.

Saakian has said that international recognition of Kosovo
as an independent state would pave the way for acceptance of
Nagorno-Karabakh’s sovereignity.

Polls close at 8 p.m. (1500 GMT). Preliminary results of the election,
in which 91,000 people are eligible to vote, are expected Friday.

Assyrian International News Agency
Threatened, Christians Flee the Mideast
7-18-2007

He refused to leave Baghdad, even after the day last year when masked Sunni
gunmen forced him and eight co-workers to line up against a wall and said,
"Say your prayers." An Assyrian Christian, Rayid Albert closed his eyes and
prayed to Jesus as the killers opened fire. He alone survived, shot seven
times. But a month ago a note was left at his front door, warning, "You have
three choices: change your religion, leave or pay the jeziya"–a tax on
Christians levied by ancient Islamic rulers. It was signed "The Islamic
Emirate of Iraq," a Qaeda pseudonym. That was the day Albert decided to get
out immediately. He and the other 10 members of his household are now living
as refugees in Kurdistan.
Across the lands of the Bible, Christians like Albert and his family are
abandoning their homes. According to the World Council of Churches, the
region’s Christian population has plunged from 12 million to 2 million in
the past 10 years. Lebanon, until recently a majority Christian country–the
only one in the Mideast–has become two-thirds Muslim. The Greek Orthodox
archbishop in Jerusalem, where only 12,000 Christians remain, is pleading
with his followers not to leave. "We have to persevere," says Theodosios
Atallah Hanna. "How can the land of Jesus Christ stay without Christians?"
The proportion of Christians in Bethlehem, once 85 percent, is now 20
percent. Egypt’s Coptic Christians, who trace the roots of their faith back
to Saint Mark’s preaching in the first century, used to account for 10
percent of their country’s population. Now they’ve dwindled to an estimated
6 percent. "The flight of Christians out of these areas is similar to the
hunt for Jews," says Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-Italian author and expert on
Islam, himself a Muslim. "There is no better example of what will happen if
this human tragedy in the Arab-Muslim world is allowed to continue."
Nowhere is the exodus more extreme than in Iraq. Before the war, members of
the Assyrian and Chaldean rites, along with smaller numbers of Armenians and
others, constituted roughly 1.2 million of the country’s 25 million people.
Most sources agree that well over half of those Christians have fled the
country now, and many or most of the rest have been internally displaced,
but some estimates are far more drastic. According to the Roman Catholic
relief organization Caritas, the number of Christians in Iraq had plummeted
to 25,000 by last year. Of the 1.7 million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and
Syria, half are Christians, says Father Raymond Moussalli, a Chaldean vicar
who now says mass every night in a basement in Amman. "The government of
Saddam used to protect us," he says. "Mr. Bush doesn’t protect us. The Shia
don’t protect us. No Christian was persecuted under Saddam for being
Christian."
Over the centuries, the region’s Christians have frequently made common
cause with their Muslim neighbors. Leaders of some Christian factions even
backed Hizbullah during last summer’s Lebanon war, and Arabic-speaking
Christians in the Palestinian territories have regularly sided with the
Muslim majority against the Israeli occupation. Five years ago Palestinian
militants found sanctuary from Israel’s tanks inside Bethlehem’s Church of
the Nativity. Nevertheless, old relationships are crumbling now. When Pope
Benedict XVI quoted a medieval scholar’s critical comments on the Prophet
Muhammad, last September, furious Palestinians reacted by torching at least
half a dozen churches on the West Bank. About 3,000 Christians remain in
Gaza–many of them seeking new homes somewhere else. "We’re living in a
state of anxiety," says Hanady Missak, deputy principal of the Rosary
Sisters School in Gaza City. Militants ransacked the school’s chapel during
the battle between Hamas and Fatah last month. Crosses were broken and
prayer books burned.
At least a few moderate imams are speaking out against attacks on
Christians. "I ask the culprits to return to the Holy Qur’an and reread it,"
said Sheik Muhammed Faieq in a recent sermon at the Mussab Mosque in the
Baghdad suburb of Dora, where jihadists have waged a cleansing campaign
against Christians. "Forcing people to leave their religion or properties is
contradicting Islam’s traditions and instructions." For many in the Middle
East, the admonition comes too late. "There is no future for Christians in
Iraq for the next thousand years," says Rayid Paulus Tuma, a Chaldean
Christian who fled his home in Mosul after two of his brothers were gunned
down gangland style. His pessimism is shared by Srood Mattei, an Assyrian
Christian now in Kurdistan: "We can see the end of the tunnel–and it is
dark."
By Rod Nordland
Newsweek
With Kevin Peraino in Jerusalem, Salih Mehdi in Baghdad, Barbie Nadeau in
Rome and Mandi Fahmy in Alexandria.

TURKISH PRIVATIZATION ADMINISTRATION SENDS INQUIRY TO SECURITY AGENCIES ON PETKIM’S PURCHASER

Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
July 17 2007

Turkish Privatization Administration has sent inquiry to security
agencies on TransCentralAsia oil consortium which purchased major
state PETKIM Petrochemical Co. for $2.05 billion, APA’s Turkey
bureau reports.

The reason for inquiry is negative public opinion on the individuals
and group of companies that won the auction for 51 pct of Petkim. The
Privatization Administration explained the inquiry to the security
agencies in "Strategic mistakes should be corrected if there are any".

The Privatization Administration was to send the document to the
Competition Agency to officialize the results of the auction.

According to the legislation, the document should be immediately sent
to the Competition Agency. But the Privatization Administration decided
to wait for exact information on TransCentralAsia oil consortium.

The owner of TransCentralAsia which competed with SOCAR&Turcas till
the end and purchased the control packet of shares of Petkim for
$2.05billion in the tender is said to be of Jewish nationality.

Turkish press reports that the chief of the company purchasing Petkim
is a Kazakhstan’s citizen, chairman of Eurasian Jews Confederation
Alexander Matskevich. Troika Dialog Best Bank of Russia gave financial
support to purchasing PetkiM. The owner of the bank is Armenian Ruben
Vardanyan. Ruben Vardaryan, one of the persons financing Armenia-2020
project, is propagandizing so that Armenians all over the world will
deposit their money in Armenian banks.

Publicizing his intention to make Armenia the most powerful country
in the South Caucasus in 2020 Ruben Vardaryan will own Petkim
Petrochemical Co. along with Alexander Matskevich.

Petrol-Ish trade union appealed to the 13th Economic Court for
annulling the result sof the auction foe the sale of Petkim. The trade
union head Mustafa Oztashkin said they will struggle till the end on
legal level to achieve annulment of the auction results.

INTERNATIONAL CHESS TOURNAMENT NAMED "LAKE SEVAN" FINISHES IN MARTUNI

Noyan Tapan
Jul 16 2007

MARTUNI, JULY 16, NOYAN TAPAN. The "Lake Sevan" International Chess
Tournament finished in Martuni on July 15. Three participants, that
is to say, Yuri Vovk (the Ukraine), Ji En Gopal (India), and Lee Chao
(China) received 5.5 out of 9 possible points each and took from first
to third places. Bartolomey Macheyan (Poland) and Armen Phashikian
(Armenia) received 5 points each and took fourth and fifth places.

RA FOREIGN MINISTER RECEIVED THE NEWLY APPOINTED US CHARGE D’AFFAIRES

armradio.am
16.07.2007 17:18

On June 6 RA Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian received US Charge
d’Affaires, Ambassador Rudolph Perina.

At the start of the meeting Oskanian welcomed Mr. Perina’s appointment
and expressed confidence that his excellent knowledge of Armenia and
the region will promote the success of his high mission in our country.

The interlocutors agreed that the two countries are interested in being
presented on the level of Ambassadors and according to the Minister,
in this stage the Ambassador’s appointment will greatly foster the
development of bilateral relations.

The parties discussed the bilateral agenda, regional issues, Armenia’s
relations with neighbors.

The interlocutors referred to the current stage of negotiations on
the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement.

The meeting was attended by US Deputy Ambassador Anthony Godfrey,
who is completing his mission in our country.

WARMING OF U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS IS BEST SCENARIO FOR ARMENIA

PanARMENIAN.Net
16.07.2007 14:32 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ If the United States collides with Turkey over
Northern Iraq and simultaneously improves relations with Iran, it
will be the best scenario for Armenia. Actually, under circumstances
Russia’s presence as a security guarantor for Armenia will lose
urgency. We should strengthen relations with Iran, Professor of
international relations and politics of the Universidad de San Andres
in Buenos Aires, Dr Khachik Ter-Ghukassian said in an interview with
PanARMENIAN.Net.

"Iran is a minority in the Islamic world, since it practices
Shi’ism. This state is the potential regional power. Will Washington
have a political force to hold a dialogue with Iran as equals? This
is the core of the problem. How will the balance be maintained between
the Sunnis (al Qaeda) and Shiites?

How will the Lebanese problem be resolved. These are questions that
need exact answers. Under any circumstances, the Armenia-Iran relations
should be apart any shocks in the region," he said.