Author: Emil Lazarian

EBRD TO INCREASE TOTAL COST OF PROGRAMS IN ARMENIA FROM 60 TO 120 MILLION EUROS IN TWO YEARS

Noyan Tapan
Dec 12 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. By late 2008, the European Bank
for Reconstruction and Developemnt (EBRD) will increase the total
cost of programs being implemented in Armenia from 60 mln euros
to 120 mln euros. Michael Weinstein, EBRD Armenia Office Director,
stated this during the December 12 press conference. Repsonding to
NT correspondent’s question, he said that the EBRD is operating in
various sectors of the Armenian economy (financial, agriculture and
food processing, renewable energy), whose number will soon increase
(tourism, services related to real estate and health care). According
to M. Weinstein, "the EBRD will opeate in Armenia until the country’s
private sector assumes its role." In his words, the major goal of
the bank is to assist with overcoming the transitional economic period.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

RA CAMD PROPOSES ZVATNOTS MANAGEMENT SEEKING ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF FUEL IMPORT

Noyan Tapan
Dec 12 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. With the aim of dealing with the
problem of aviation fuel lack at Zvartnots Airport, the RA Civil
Aviation Main Department (CAMD) applied to the airport management
with the proposal to seek alternartive ways of fuel import. NT
correspondent was informed about it from the spokeswoman for the RA
CAMD Gayane Davtian. According to her, by the end of this week, the
aviation fuel importing company Mika Limited will import the necessary
amount of fuel. To recap, there has been a lack of fuel at Zvartnots
for two weeks, as a result of which some flights were delayed.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

700 ARMENIAN FAMILIES RECEIVE LOANS FOR HOUSE HEATING

Noyan Tapan
Dec 12 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. 700 Armenian families received
loans for heating of private residential houses through the ACBA
Credit Agricole Bank.

Tamara Babayan, Director of the Renewable Energy and Energy Saving
Fund, told reporters on December 12 that the total cost of the
private residential house heating program is 4.2 million USD, which
was allocated to Armenian banks by the World Bank. In her words,
given the fact that the loan-giving bank does not use a pledge,
the annual interest rate of a loan makes 24% and it is repayble
over 3 years. The loans of 50 thousand drams (about 135 USD) to 1
million drams are provided, the maximum amount is 1.5 mln drams. It
was mentioned that ACBA Credit Agricole has submitted a bid for
1.2 mln USD, 900 thousand USD of which has already been provided to
citizens. T. Babayan noted that unless other banks become more active,
the remaining sum will also be provided as loans by this bank.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LOANS FOR CONSTRUCTION OF SMALL HYDROPOWER PLANTS PROVIDED IN ARMENIA

Noyan Tapan
Dec 12 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. The Cascade Credit Bank has already
approved the program of constructing two small hydropower plants in
Armenia under the renewable energy program. Tamara Babayan, Director of
the Renewable Energy and Energy Saving Fund, told reporters on December
12 that for the purpose of constructiing small hydropower plants in
Armenia the World Bank gave a $5 million credit to Cascade Credit
Bank, which in its turn will provide a libor plus 7.5% interest rate
to a hydropower plant builder. Besides, 3 million USD was invested
by Cascade Credit and 7 million USD – by the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for this purpose. According
to T. Babayan, loans are provided for 8 years, the maxumum amount –
1 million USD, and the builder must invest 30% of the program’s total
cost. It was mentioned that the bids received already exceed threefold
the total amount of the credit.

EBRD FORECASTS 8.5% GROWTH OF ARMENIAN ECONOMY IN 2007

Noyan Tapan
Dec 12 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. According to the 2006 Transition
Report of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Developemnt (EBRD),
in 2007 Armenia’s GDP will grow by 8.5%, while a 12.5% GDP grwoth
was forecast for 2006.

Alexandru Kirmichiu, EBRD economist, said this when presenting the
above mentioned report on December 12. In his words, 50% of Armenia’s
economic growth is now ensured by the construction sector, with
services also accounting for a considerable share of GDP growth. The
EBRD assessed as positive the reforms in the country’s financial
sector and the entrance of a new mobile phone communication operator
into the country. A. Kirmichiu noted that the lack of competition is
the main problem of the Armenia’s economic development, while reforms
of the business environment and corporate governance will remain
a condition for increasing investments. According to the speaker,
although in 2005 the private sector’s crediting increased by 33% in
Armenia, the accessibility of financing is one of the lowest in the
CIS and Eastern Europe. The ratio of domestic credits to GDP made 8.2%
in the country7 It was noted that this index may be doubled thanks to
further reforms in the financial sector. The EBRD economist noted that
the dram’s appreciation may pose a threat to economic development,
if the productivity of the Armenian economy is not increased. He
expressed a hope that investments to foster this growth will be made.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

KRYLOV: KARABAKH’S ABSENCE IN NEGOTIATIONS IS QUITE NONSENSE

PanARMENIAN.Net
12.12.2006 17:48 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Nagorno Karabakh conflict will not be settled in
the near future, and the inclusion of Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan
is unlikely to happen, we can say that it is quite impossible, stated
observer Alexander Krylov, a political scientist from the Institute
of World Economy and International Relations of Russian Academy of
Sciences. In his words, the current efforts of international mediators
are doomed to failure since they do not take into account the will
and mood of Nagorno Karabakh people in proper way. Krylov thinks
that the greater problem is in the current format of negotiation
process, where the Nagorno Karabakh does not take part, "and this is
quite a nonsense." "without Karabakh’s immediate participation in the
negotiations the final settlement of the conflict is impossible. When
Nagorno Karabakh returns to the peace talks, then we can speak about
real progress," the Russian political scientist stressed, reports
‘Novosti Armenia’.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN AND GREEK DEFENSE MINISTERS HAD SHORT MEETING IN YEREVAN

Armenpress
Dec 12 2006

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS: Defense minister Serzh Sarkisian
had a short meeting today at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport with defense
minister of Greece, Evangelos Meimarakis, who made a stop-over in
Armenia on his way to Afghanistan to inspect a Greek peacekeeping
battalion serving there.

Armenian defense ministry said the two ministers spoke about bilateral
military cooperation, as well as about Armenian peacekeepers serving
in Kosovo under the command of a Greek battalion.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

‘PROBLEM IS NOT BETWEEN ARMENIAN AND TURKISH PEOPLE’ – II

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Dec 10 2006

Mr. Wally Sarkeesian’s Second Open Letter to Dr. Sedat Laciner on
Armenian Issue

"Dear Sedat,

Thanks for your reply.

I welcome the opportunity to visit you and Turkey to see the country
and those things you mention, I would also love the opportunity to
see where my father was born being that it is now located in Turkey.

I will take your word on the Armenian literature that is available
in Turkey but I would love to read some of them outside of Istanbul
in Anatolian region?

I would like to begin this dialog by asking you some questions of my
own and then I will respond to your questions.

1- I am curious at what age you were taught about the Armenian
Massacre. All the research that I have done demonstrates that the
curriculum in the public schools do not mention the Armenian issue.

It is not until you become an adult and are subjected to alternative
publications.

2- As you are aware Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize winner admitted the
massacre of one million Armenians. How come the Turkish government is
not privy to these facts? Do you think he is falsifying the information

3- Just look at information from Turkish Weekly archives. The
articles in the archives claim that there were Armenians Senators,
Ministers and Civil Servants during the Ottoman Empire. What happened
to them? Is there any Senators, Ministers or civil servants in today’s
Turkish government?

.php?id=114

4- Do you believe that over 50 governments around the world
including 38 states of the US recognized Armenian Genocide without
any foundational proof? Is it simply just a rubber stamp without any
fact? Why would they do that?

5- I would also like to extend to you a similar offer of travels.

Please travel to any country of the world where there is an Armenian
community I will be happy to join you. Go to the Armenian churches
or community center and I guarantee you that you will find that 95%
of there roots stem back to land now claimed by Turkey. They will all
speak of stories from there relatives about the massacre. I guarantee
this so much that if this is false I will pay for all your expenses.

Just for your information after over 90 year of the massacre today
still most Armenian in the Diaspora they refer to each other by the
city where there parents or grand parents where born not where they
where borne even though some for example if Hagop was born in Iraq
and his father was borne in VAN they call him VANEZY Hagop not Iraqzy
Hagop from Iraq. Just to tell you how much Armenian in the Diaspora
is attached to there ancestral land…

6- The last questions I have for you is, do you really believe that
Armenians in the Diaspora are fabricating the genocide? I recognize
that you admit that there were Armenians massacred at the hands of
the Turks but you still deny the atrocity is genocide. Please let me
provide you with Article 2 of the Geneva Convention, straight from
the website of the United Nations. This should clarify the dispute
as the statement is VERY clear.

Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

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Now about the 70,000 Armenians working in Turkey compare that to
the million of Turks working in the EU, does this mean Turkey is a
bad country or the Turkish population is dwindling? Why have they
left Turkey?

About the Armenia population declining; I have no idea where you are
getting this information. In fact last September was the first time
I visited Armenia and I expected to see a third world country. I was
pleasantly surprised to see the monumental progress they have made in
last 15 year despite a major earthquake, and a war with Azerbaijan,
shortage of fuel as well as the hostile environment at the two borders
Turkey and Azerbaijan. In the last 5 years Armenia’s economy has grown
12% every year and Yerevan is becoming a little Paris with tourists
from all over the world. I even had hard time finding a hotel because
they were all booked. I plead with you to stop providing misleading
information about Armenian statistics. Yes, when USSR collapsed they
lost most of there manufacturing industry.

Armenian had to come out of the wreckage and build a country pretty
much from scratch. Please do not worry about Armenia’s population with
the last 15 years as a testament to Armenian people capabilities;
they will build the entire economic infrastructure. If there is one
good thing about Armenians it is that they are great entrepreneurs.

About Karabagh: When the USSR occupied Armenia, Azerbaijan and other
countries it was to keep the Moslems happy. They too carved Armenia
and gave it to the Azeri to keep the Moslems populations in USSR
happy. When the USSR collapse occurred, the Armenians in Karabagh did
not want to be part of Azerbaijan just like the people in KOSOVO they
declared there independence, it was the Azeri who sent there mighty
military, tanks and all to crash down the Karabagh Armenians.

Unexpectedly to the Azeri, the 100,000 brave Karabagh Armenians not
only repelled the Azeri’s military force but with simple shot guns
they also occupied extra Azeri territory as a buffer zone. It was not
the Armenians who began the war in the first place and so please let
us stick to Armenian and Turkish issue.

You also claim the Armenians in Diaspora are boycotting Turkish
products and I have not found that to be true, in fact I have a bowl
of Turkish dried figs on my kitchen table.

>>From my recent visit to Armenia, as well as my consistent monitoring
of the Armenian press, I have not seen any objections to the Turkey
becoming a member of EU. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the Armenian
President has publicly stated that he supports Turkey’s entrance into
the EU but I am not 100% sure.

To answer your last statement, firstly, through all our discourse I
have never mentioned that the Turkish people hate Armenians neither
Armenian people hate Turks in contrary even during the massacre Turkish
people helped there fellow Armenian. They are unhappy with the Turkish
government but not the Turkish people. Also, you mentioned that the
Turkish people are making great efforts to be friends again with the
Armenian people like Orhan Pamuk. It is the Turkish government that
has caused such hostilities between the two nations. Karabagh would
have been the best opportunity for Turkey to have played a positive
leadership roll but instead they simply dismissed the situation and
closed its borders.

Turkey could have played a good neighbor roll and solved the issue
of Karabagh instate they close the borders build gas pipeline from
Azerbaijan by passing Armenia through Georgia, and now building
rollway in same way by passing Armenia, do you really think these
are the great efforts by Turkish government to establish a good
friendship despite objections by all EU members and US show me one
of these great effort have Turkish government done?

I strongly believe that we must keep the communication and dialogue
open between people like your self and Armenian Diaspora like my self
and others however; we cannot do it by just throwing dirt back and
fort in to each other face and mixing one issue with other you are
making this is though it is a Franco Turkish issue… Any dialog and
or discussion must lead to some where…

One thing I can assure you as an individual Armenian in Diaspora this
issue will never go away whether present Turkish government or future
government they have to deal with it you just cannot go on boycotting
other countries.

I look foreword one day meeting you face to face and hopes your next
articles will be more toward bringing these two people together then
dividing them it start with good people like your self who has great
tools to achieve it…

Have a nice day…."

Wally Sarkeesian The US

LEADER OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATION ARRESTED IN ARMENIA ON CHARGES OF COUP ATTEMPT

Interfax, Russia
Dec 10 2006

YEREVAN. Dec 10 (Interfax) – Zhirair Sefilian, a veteran of the
Nagorno-Karabakh war, a commander of the Shushi battalion and the
coordinator of a public organization called For the Protection of
Liberated Territories was arrested early Sunday by Officers of the
Armenian National Security Service.

Sefilian is accused of attempting to stage a coup, the press service
of his public organization told Interfax on Sunday.

"Officers of the Armenian National Security Service searched the
apartments of a number of Sefilian’s supporters and friends, as well
as the office of the Araks-Kura organization, in which Sefilian serves
as head of the board of trustees," the press service said.

Meanwhile, the Armenian National Security Service has yet to comment
on the issue.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PARTITION IS NOT THE ANSWER
By Natalie Smolenski, Brown Daily Herald

Brown Daily Herald , Brown Univ., Rhode Island
December 4, 2006 Monday

PROVIDENCE, R.I.

The Nov. 28 column by Michal Zapendowski ’07, "An exit strategy for
Iraq," failed to address the historical and geographic connections
that bind Iraq’s Sunni, Shi’a and Kurd communities. These linkages
could not be destroyed except by way of violence on a heretofore
unprecedented scale.

First, Zapendowski did not take into account the irregular distribution
of the country’s natural resources — specifically oil, which in Iraq
is located predominately in majority-Kurd and Shi’a regions. Because
oil accounts for 95 percent of the Iraqi government’s revenues, a
Sunni state with negligible oil could not sustain itself except as
the humiliated client of a neighbor or a more powerful regional ally.

Second, though Zapendowski did speak to the demographic difficulties of
partition by invoking the Yugoslav precedent and proffering population
exchange as a solution, he overlooked an important Middle Eastern
instance of population exchange for the sake of state formation: in
1924, Western, Greek-speaking Muslims living in what is now Greece
were exchanged for Turkish-speaking Christians from Anatolia. Though
the process helped form Turkish and Greek states, it was based upon
a fever of cultural de-hybridization which had already resulted in
the genocide of Turkey’s Armenian population. A population swap is
never a peaceful maneuver in which residents simply exchange places
of residence; it is accompanied by an uprooting of the national and
sub-national soul.

Furthermore, Baghdad, the capital that has most often been suggested
for a "Sunni state" in Iraq is by no means a simple ethnic equation.

Its northeastern slum, Sadr City, houses some of the most fervent
Shi’a militias. Similarly, the mixed Sunni/Shi’a area directly south of
Baghdad has been termed the "Triangle of Death" by occupation forces
because of the population’s constant contestation over community
jurisdictions. No foreign overseer, no matter how well-intentioned,
could quash the indigenous violence springing from a nationwide
partition plan based on politically defined demarcations. Coalition
forces’ frustrations with containing current violence would seem
insignificant compared with the all out border warfare that would
accompany the establishment of three nebulous, neighboring states.

Though it may seem counterintuitive to some Western observers, many
Iraqis favor the borders drawn for them by British colonialists and do
not consider their communities politically incompatible. Despite the
shortcomings of coexistence, partition would culturally, economically
and militarily devastate Iraq’s population.

The closest viable alternative to what Zapendowski suggests may be
a federated Iraq, under one central government with three provinces.

Though the Kurds have functioned successfully under such a system for
the past 15 years, the fortunes of the Sunni and Shi’a communities
appear to be far more intertwined. The relevant question for Americans
is: to what extent can our continued military presence help bring
about federated or unified peaceful coexistence for Iraq’s major
cultural communities?

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress