Author: Jagharian Tania

ARMENIAN BUSINESSMAN COMMITTED SUICIDE IN PENZA RUSSIAN CITY
27.07.2004 13:58
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A citizen of Armenia has committed suicide in Penza
Russian city by jumping out of the window of his suite, situated on
the 5-th floor of Russia Hotel. As reported by Interfax news agency,
the tragedy occurred July 26 at about 9 a.m. Resulting from the fall
the man got numerous fractures and died in the ambulance car. The
37-year-old entrepreneur from Yerevan had lived in Russia Hotel for a
week. Criminal proceedings are instituted on the occasion of the
suicide, the causes are being investigated.

ArmenPress
July 26 2004
ARMENIA N PRIME MINISTER SPEAKS IN FAVOR OF REOPENING ABKHAZ SECTION
OF RAILWAY
TBILISI, JULY 26, ARMENPRESS: Restoration of railway communication
across Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia topped the agenda of
Armenian-Georgian talks today in Tbilisi with participation of
Armenian prime minister Andranik Margarian and an extensive Armenian
delegation. “Armenia is greatly interested in the resumption of the
railway operation of the Abkhaz section,” Margarian told reporters
after concluding talks with his Georgian counterpart Zurab Zhvania.
He said though this issue is not linked directly to Armenian-Georgian
relations, the ongoing negotiations inspire some hopes that a certain
progress may be achieved in that direction “as Georgia has too
softened its position on this issue.”
“We hope that if not this year then some years later this problem
will be resolved,” Margarian said adding that the operating railway
is of vital importance not only for Armenia but for Georgia as well,
as deeper economic cooperation with the breakaway region may serve as
an additional resource for the peaceful settlement of the conflict.
Concerning the current level of trade and economic cooperation
with Georgia, Margarian said though its amount is growing day by day
the available potential is not used to the full extent. Overall there
are only 25 joint Armenian-Georgian ventures, which is not a good
figure, according to the prime minister, especially having in mind
traditional Georgian-Armenian ties, the huge potential of Georgian
Armenians, many of whom are engaged in businesses and serve as
government officials.
According to the Armenian prime minister, a bigger attention
should be devoted to building favorable conditions for private sector
cooperation, which he said is hampered by some security problems
Armenian businessmen run into on Georgian highways, despite a
recorded progress, following a Georgian government decision to cut
the number of road police officers.
“During our meeting with president Mikhail Saakashvili we learned
that Georgia is trying to introduce simplified customs procedures on
border with Armenia, supposed to facilitate cargo forwarding services
and if all these promises come true we may expect a great upsurge in
the volume of bilateral trade by the close of this year,” Margarian
said.
Margarian said also Armenia has proposed that a wholesale market
in Gogavan on the border, closed by Georgian authorities, reopen to
allow bordering provinces to establish contacts and start mutually
beneficial trade.
The Armenian prime minister also spoke about power supplies from
Armenia to Georgia saying Armenia’s power grid is run by private
companies which will supply as much electricity as Georgia would
request.

55.5% INCREASE IN NUMBER OF DEALS WITH IMMOVABLE PROPERTY RECORDED
YEREVAN, JULY 23. ARMINFO. A total of 45,953 deals with immovable
property were recorded in Armenia in the first half of 2004, which is
8.8% more than in the corresponding period of 2003.
According to the information reported by the RA State Registry of
Immovable Property, 19,061 deals (41.5%) were alienation, 16.7%
primary registration, 9.7% lease, 7.6% pledge, 0.5% privatization,
8.3% inheritance, and 15.7% other types. As against the first half of
2003, a 40.1% increase in the number of alienation transactions, which
influence the market most of all, was recorded in the first half of
2004, and a 3.2% increase as against the second half of 2003. In the
first half of 2004, 39.6% of alienation deals were recorded in
Yerevan. During the period under review, 67.3% of 6,613
purchase-and-sale deals involved flats. As against the corresponding
period of last year this index increased by 15.7%, and decreased by
17.7% as against the second half of 2003.

Turkish Press
July 19 2004
Pushing EU Entry, Turkish PM Starts French Visit
AFP: 7/19/2004

by Hugh Schofield
PARIS, July 19 (AFP) – Turkey`s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
held talks in Paris with his French counterpart Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Monday at the start of a three-day visit to push Turkish entry into
the European Union.
Speaking to reporters at Ankara airport, Erdogan said that in his
meetings with French leaders he would “explain what steps we have
taken in order to align ourselves with the EU and where we are in
terms of implementation (of reforms).”
The prime minister, whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) has
Islamist origins, was to lunch with President Jacques Chirac Tuesday
after a meeting with business leaders. He will also see the heads of
the three main political parties before leaving Wednesday.
A crucial period is approaching for Turkey`s application bid, with
the European Commission due to give its opinion in October on a
possible opening of negotiations, followed by a decision in December
by European leaders on whether enough progress has been made towards
the EU`s reform demands.
Erdogan was expected to use the French visit to build up support in
the European country which has seen probably the most heated public
debate over the suitability for the EU of a predominantly Muslim and
Asian nation.
While Chirac has indicated in recent speeches that he now regards
Ankara`s progress to EU membership as “irreversible” and spoken of
its “historic and very ancient European vocation,” many in his own
government are deeply opposed to its accession.
In addition opinion polls indicate that a majority of the population
is against Turkey`s admission to the 25-nation body.
“The opposition comes in various forms: fear of Islam and immigrants
at one end, fear of seeing Europe dissolve into a vast free-trade
zone for others,” said Eddy Fougier of French Institute for
International Relations (IFRI).
France also has a large Armenian community of some 450,000 people,
whose pressure in 2001 secured the official recognition by the French
parliament of the Armenian genocide. This remains a highly
contentious issue between Ankara and Paris.
The opposition Socialist party said Monday it supports Turkish entry
“as long as the accession criteria are respected,” but both Chirac`s
ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and its junior partner the
Union for French Democracy (UDF) are sceptical.
“Europe`s historical identity is indissolubly linked — not with the
religious convictions of Europeans today — but with a cultural and
political model fashioned by 15 centuries of Christianity… Turkey
is a stranger to this history,” said UDF Euro-deputy Jean-Louis
Bourlanges.
The left-wing daily Liberation said in an editorial that the
“sticking-point between Europe and Turkey is not Islam or
Christianity, but the secular basis for social ties and institutions.
Turkey will have its own place in Europe … once it has given up
Sunni Islam as the de facto state religion.”
But it went on in more encouraging vein: “There is no convincing
reason to think that Islam is not in its essence compatible with
democracy and secularism. Helping Turkey to prove this should be an
uplifting challenge for Europeans.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI
July 17 2004
Tourism chief considering in-state jobs strategy
Overseas workers nab much of the summer employment
By SCOTT WILLIAMS
Wisconsin’s top tourism official is considering stepped-up efforts to
promote summer job opportunities in the tourism industry as many
attractions recruit workers from overseas despite unemployment here.

Tourism Secretary Jim Holperin said he has no indication that theme
parks and other popular destinations are intentionally passing over
Wisconsin workers. But he said the state lacks a comprehensive
strategy for matching Wisconsin’s jobless to tourism jobs, which
often go to workers from Poland, Finland or other foreign countries.
A state job center in Wisconsin Dells, for example, has stopped
sending representatives to job fairs in Milwaukee, relying instead on
the Internet to reach job seekers in the state’s largest metropolitan
area.
“There might be a programmatic gap,” Holperin said, meaning not
everyone who needs a job is being reached by existing programs.
Destinations in the Dells, Door County and other popular tourist
spots began wide-scale recruiting of foreign workers, typically
college students, when low unemployment in the late 1990s created a
labor shortage. Although the economy has since gone flat and
Wisconsin joblessness is up, many attractions continue hiring from
out of the country for their summer seasonal help, citing other
forces in the marketplace.
Some say residents who live in Milwaukee and those who live in other
areas of high unemployment cannot be coaxed into relocating for the
summer, and that young people in Wisconsin generally must return to
school before the tourist season ends.
At Landmark Resort in Door County, Personnel Director Joanne Stanzel
has hired several college-aged students from Armenia and Romania,
primarily for housekeeping jobs.
Stanzel said some Wisconsin residents seem uninterested in the
drudgery of scrubbing bathrooms and arranging bedsheets.
“Even in desperate times they don’t want to do housekeeping,” she
said. “It’s sad to say.”
One housekeeper, Lilit Vasilyan of Romania, said she worked as a
waitress in her home country but wanted to visit the United States
this summer to improve her English.
Vasilyan, 20, said she is enjoying her job at Landmark and is most
impressed by Door County’s natural scenery.
“I imagined how it would be,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
July 16, 2004 Friday 2:31 PM Eastern Time
Armenian NPP to be halted for 65 days of repairs
By Tigran Liloyan
YEREVAN
The Armenian nuclear power plant will be stopped for planned repairs
and fuel loading in the small hours of July 31. The repairs will take
65 days, Armenian NPP General Director Gagik Markosyan told Itar-Tass
on Friday. The power plant will be connected to the Armenian
electricity network on October 4.
That will be the largest repair in the entire history of the Armenian
nuclear power plant, Markosyan said. The power plant’s main computer
will be replaced with $1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Eur550,000 from the TACIS program will help to replace 37 switches,
six kilovolt each. The power plant’s safety will thereby be upgraded.
The fourth turbo-generator will be repaired, and blades of two
turbo-generators will be replaced.
The Armenian nuclear power plant was commissioned in 1979 and halted
after the devastating earthquake of 1989. The mothballed power plant
was restarted in 1996 with the assistance of Russian specialists. The
second unit of the power plant provides for about 40% of all
electricity in Armenia. A Russian-Armenian intergovernmental
agreement put the Armenian NPP under control of Inter UES, a
subsidiary of the Russian Unified Energy System grid.
Meanwhile, the European Union insists on closure of the Armenian
nuclear power plant that is located 40 kilometers west of Yerevan.
The Armenian authorities say that the power plant can be closed only
if the country obtains other sources of energy.

SOME 10 TREES CUT IN AN AREA OF 500-600SQ. METERS IN FRONT OF BUILDING
#28 IN ISAHAKYAN STREET IN YEREVAN
YEREVAN, JULY 14. ARMINFO. Today in the morning, some 10 trees were
cut in an area of 500-600sq. meters in front of the administrative
press building #28 in Isahakyan street in Yerevan.
The builders told ARMINFO that a 4-5-meter-deep pit will be dug in the
area, which implies the felling of dozen trees growing in the
area. Reliable sources told ARMINFO that an entertainment club is
expected to be constructed in this territory. The club will belong to
RA Minister of Territorial Administration and Coordination of
Infrastructures Hovik Abramyan.
Despite the appeals of journalists and NGOs to the Yerevan
Municipality, Center Community and Nature Protection Ministry, since
yesterday, felling proved to be inevitable. Head of the Department for
Green Plantations, Center Community, told ARMINFO that the
construction is started without permission.

BRITISH AMBASSADOR ATTENDS LAUNCH OF GOVERNMENT INFORMATION CENTER
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS: Today Manuk Topuzian ,Government
Chief of Staff, opened a new Information Center in Government Building
Number 3 in the presence of the British Ambassador, Thorda
Abbott-Watt. The Information Center has been funded by the British
Department for International Development’s Armenia Public Sector
Reform Project (APSREP). It is one of eight new business initiatives
funded by the project to be implemented over the next two years.
The main role of the Information Center is to make government
administration more accessible to the public by welcoming visitors and
helping them with their enquiries. The Center covers seven ministries
including Health, Education, Labor and Social Issues and the National
Statistics Service. TheCenter is on the first floor of the
building. The staff are trained to handle enquiries and able quickly
to communicate with the Public Relations Departments of the
Ministries. APSREP has also provided the Public Relations Departments
of the Ministries of Education and Social Security with new computers
and telephones.
There are ramps at the roadside and main entrance to provide access
for the disabled and small meeting rooms in the foyer for those who
have difficulty climbing the stairs. Signs point the way to the
various sources of information. Information boards displaying ministry
service charters and citizens rights are also under preparation, and
will be installed over the next 6 months.

Turkish Press, Turkey
July 12 2004
What Edwards Means
BYEGM: 7/12/2004
BY ASLI AYDINTASBAS
SABAH- Does everybody really want George W. Bush to lose the coming
US presidential elections? Will a new administration led by
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry really manage to turn a
new page on US foreign policy?
For Turkey, the situation is quite complicated. As a matter of fact,
Ankara doesn’t willingly support the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive
strikes whose ultimate aim is to expand American military and
economic power in the Islamic world. However, on the other hand,
neither does Ankara oppose the `star’ role Washington has set for
Turkey in its Greater Middle East Initiative (GME), which is why
certain domestic circles were extremely pleased with Bush’s speech at
Galatasaray University at the closing of NATO’s recent Istanbul
summit. Having seen Turkey’s critical importance in the wake of Sept.
11 attacks, the Bush administration is now lending its full support
to Ankara on both its EU membership bid and relations with the
International Monetary Fund. Bush somehow knows and likes our
country.
Therefore, Ankara foreign policy circles believe that the devil we
know is better than the one we don’t. Let’s recall that Kerry is one
of the supporters of the so-called Armenian genocide bills. In
addition, he is a member of US leftist circles, which are known for
their harsh criticisms of Turkey. Unlike Bush, Kerry won’t be willing
to pressure EU countries for Turkey’s EU membership.
However, Turkey shouldn’t let itself get worried. Let’s not forget
the Clinton administration, once very close to the leftist and Greek
lobbies in the US, and how Clinton’s term was one of the golden eras
for Turkish-US relations. What I’d like to stress here is no matter
what the US president thinks about our country, Turkey is a sine qua
non for US foreign policy. There are fixed, inevitable parameters in
Washington’s foreign policy which no leader can alter. Moreover,
would a Kerry administration be able to ignore the nuclear power
plant that Iran is currently building in Natanz? Kerry certainly
doesn’t have any magic wand with which to change the world.
Kerry and his charismatic running mate John Edwards so far seem very
clumsy in their campaigning, as Edwards is voicing a very leftist
rhetoric which means little to the US nation. The specter of `class
war’ which Edwards often raises in his speeches is not a popular
theme for Americans. This duo must prove to their country that they
are capable of correcting things inside and outside the homeland.
Otherwise, Americans too might opt to stick with the devil they know.

ROMANIA HOSTS CONFERENCE ON BLACK SEA REGIONAL SECURITY
Rompres news agency
12 Jul 04
Bucharest, 12 July: Cooperation of countries in the Black Sea area on
regional security, including border security, is one of the key
factors of European and international security, highlighted
participants to the works of an international conference dubbed
“Strategic planning of a regional border security drill”, organized
between 12-15 July in Bucharest by the George C. Marshall Centre, in
cooperation with the Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE), and the
US Department of Defence.
In the opening of the conference, State Minister for the Coordination
of National Defence, European Integration and Justice Ioan Talpes
underscored the importance of more effective international cooperation
within the post-11 September security context, with a view to fighting
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles and
risk-bearing materials.
Talpes highlighted Romania’s initiatives in the field, mentioning the
one taken on 20 May 2004 on the development of regional cooperation in
fighting trafficking in nuclear, biological and chemical materials, to
which Bulgaria, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and the Ukraine are
parties. State Minister Ioan Talpes also pointed out that of late the
cooperation in the Black Sea area has proved to be increasingly
important both for regional and for European and international
security.
Ambassador Mary Ann Peters, director associate for international
relations with George C Marshall European Centre said that
participants would try to find during this border security drill the
best solutions for cooperation between national and multinational
institutions to harmonize procedures in the field for a better
exchange of information and inter-agency cooperation. Safer borders is
one of the most important tasks for a country’s institutions, Mary Ann
Peters said, and at the close of the conference, participants will
have to seek to carry out the solutions found on this occasion.
In his turn, counsellor on terrorism fighting with the US Department
of Defence John Markley appreciated the SECI (Southeastern European
Cooperation Initiative) Regional Centre’s activity in fighting
crossborder crime, saying that at present attempts are made at
strengthening cooperation between SECI-member countries in legal
matters. Markley added that the SECI is a model of cooperation for
other countries in the area, with the GUAM project underway, including
Georgia, Uzbekistan, Armenia and the Republic of Moldova, seeking to
forge a similar partnership.
SECI Centre Director and conference host Yalcin Cakici underscored
that border security is one of the SECI’s main objectives within the
context of the institution’s concern over fighting human beings and
drug trafficking as well as international terrorism. In its four years
of activity, the SECI managed to carry out successful regional
initiatives, becoming part of an integrated European system fighting
crossborder crime and constantly benefiting from US support.
Director for international programmes on the non-proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction with the US Department of Defence Harlan
Strauss said that one of the conference’s main aims is to examine the
ways in which the benefits of the Black Sea area cooperation taking
the form of the Black Sea Cooperation Process can be used.
President of the George C. Marshall Association in Romania Doru
Frunzulica underscored Romania’s activity and efforts in solving
regional security issues, which also contributed to Romania’s
integration into NATO. Frunzulica appreciated that the Black Sea is
nowadays a linchpin for European security, while success in the area
can only be secured through the cooperation of the respective
countries.
The conference is part of an initiative recently launched in Romania
dwelling on regional cooperation on fighting the proliferation of
nuclear, biological, chemical and radioactive materials, with
representatives of national institutions holding positions in border
check, export control, national security and national defence in
member countries of the SECI Regional Committee on fighting
crossborder crime attending.