Author: Kajoyan Gevork

BUSINESSMAN: RUSSIA INTERESTED IN IMPORT OF ARMENIAN PERLITE

ARMINFO News Agency
16/01/2013

Today Russia like during the Soviet period of time needs import of
Armenian perlite, Suren Gevorgyan, President of the Board of director
of Karakert Stone-Working Plant OJSC, the holder of the 50% stake in
the company, told ArmInfo.

He said that yet in 2007 Armenia and Russia made an interstate
agreement implying resumption of import of Armenian perlite. Then
prime minister of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan and Transport Minister of
Russia Igor Levitin signed the agreement. A year before, in 2006,
an agreement was made with RAO UES on launching a joint production
at the plant. However, the agreement was not implemented due to some
“absurd reasons.”

“It can be called nothing but crime when RAO UES transfers $300,000
to the plant’s account, makes an agreement on investments in the
amount of $30 million, but all that remains on the paper,” Gevorgyan
said. He thinks that Russia would easily return its investments
because it buys heat insulating perlitic materials from an American
Corning Company for $1.2-$1.3 thousand per cu m, while the Karakert
Stone-Working Plant was to supply the same quality materials for
$600. The businessman said that Corning built a small plant on final
processing of perlitic heat insulating constructions near Moscow,
while Armenia fails to export its perlite reserves that will expire
in 3,000 years in case of annual export of 1 million tons. He said
that there are 50-60 combined heat and power plants that began using
heat-insulating materials on the basis of basalt fiber for lack of
perlite. Such materials need replacement within 4-5 years, while the
perlite thermal insulating boards would serve ten times longer.

Gevorgyan said that the plant was designed in 1974 and was put into
service in 1990. However, it was suspended after 4 months of start-up
operation for lack of gas supply. The plant occupies an area of 20 ha.

He said that 6.2 million Soviet rubles were spent on construction
of that unique plant. Now, it is estimated at $150-$200 million. The
plant will create 1,5 thousand jobs if production of thermal insulating
materials from perlite foam is resumed and the export to Russia is
launched in line with the above governmental agreement.

As for the perlite reserves in Armenia, Gevorgyan said that reserves in
the Aragats perlite mine are the best in the world with their quality
attributes. The mine contains over 50% of total world reserves of
this mineral or nearly 3 billion cu m.

“If Armenia exports 1 million cu m of primary processed perlite
annually, the proceeds from exports may reach $3 billion,” Gevorgyan
said.

He recalled that since 1980s Russia had been importing up to 1.2
million tons of perlite from the Aragats mine annually for production
of 98% of heat-insulating materials in the energy system.

Commenting on development of perlite manufacturing in the world, he
said that over the last 20 years over 80 perlite processing plants had
been built in the United States. That country produces 12.5 million
cu m of perlite products out of 27 million cu m of annual production
in the world. Germany that has no perlite mines imports it from the
USA and exports 5 million cu m of expanded perlite. China has built
20 new plants in the given sector over the last years. There are 15
similar plants in Turkey.

“In the meantime, Armenia that has the biggest mine of the highest
quality perlite in the world produces nothing. It just boggles the
mind!” the business said.

QUESTION ON NAGORNO KARABAKH INFURIATES IVANISHVILI

APA
[ 17 January 2013 14:20 ]

“I have conveyed the Azerbaijani President’s position on the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict to Tigran Sargsyan”

Baku – APA. “Georgia supports the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict through negotiations,” Georgia’s Prime Minister Bidzina
Ivanishvili said at the press briefing following the meeting with
Armenia’s Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, APA reports quoting “Armenia
Today”. Noting his meeting with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev
during the visit to Baku, Ivanishvili said he conveyed Aliyev’s
position to Sargsyan.

Both countries’ journalists have been allowed asking two questions
at the press conference. But the question of “Rustavi 2” TV reporter
on the statements of Georgian FM Maia Panjikidze about the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict infuriated Ivanishvili and the Georgian journalists
have not been let ask a second question. Ivanishvili noted Maia
Panjikidze’s statement has already been clarified. The prime minister
said the minister’s words were distorted and got angry as this issue
was raised again. According to him, just “Rustavi 2” exaggerated this
issue and is trying to create tension in Armenia over this matter.

Child protection problems discussed in Armenia

January 17, 2013 – 15:34 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenian Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of
Territorial Administration Armen Gevorgyan held a consultation on
children’s rights protection, with Minister of Labor and Social
Affairs Artem Asatryan present.

Cooperation with international institutions on child protection issues
was in the focus of the discussion.

The Deputy PM noted that the issue will be included on the agenda of
the meeting of the council addressing human trafficking cases reported
in Armenia. An agreement was further reached to raise the issue at
child protection national commission meeting, the ministry’s press
service reported.

BAKU HIKES MILITARY SPENDING TO $3.7 BILLION

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

An Azeri military parade in Baku last year BAKU (Associated
Press)-Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev announced a sharp hike in
military spending and again warned Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict.

Aliyev said in remarks published Wednesday in state newspapers that
this year’s defense budget will rise to $3.7 billion, up from $3
billion last year.

Annual military spending increases have taken place amid persisting
tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Border skirmishes are
relatively common, but there has been no return to the full-out
conflict of the 1990s.

Hundreds of people gathered Saturday in Baku, in protest at the death
this month of an 18-year old conscript. Demonstrators said he died
as a result of abuse.

In remarks addressed at the domestic opposition, Aliyev warned against
smearing Azerbaijan’s army.

MURDER VICTIM’S MOM: “LOOK AT HIM, OUR VERSION OF RAMIL SAFAROV”
Yeranuhi Soghoyan

16:55, January 15, 2013

The trial of Harutyun Sargsyan, accused of the premeditated murder
of Karen Yesayan, who was engaged to be married to the daughter
of former Gyumri mayor Vardan Ghoukasyan finally commenced today,
albeit with a forty minute delay, at a packed Gyumri court.

The trail had been scheduled to start on December 27, but the accused
had never been transferred from a National Security Service holding
cell to the Artik Correctional Facility.

Relatives and friends of the accused staged a noisy protest outside
the Gyumri court. They held placards reading “Harutyun Sargsyan is
Innocent”, “Shame on the Prosecutor” and “Arrest the Real Murderer”.

When Sargsyan was ushered into the courtroom, Anahit Iskandaryan,
mother of the murder victim, began yelling invectives at the accused.

“Take a good look at him. He’s our version of Ramil Safarov. Look at
that garbage,” shouted the emotional mother.

The accused replied by saying that she shouldn’t jump the gun at
labelling people, but rather be more concerned at exposing the real
murderer of her son.

Sargsyan is a 29 year-old college graduate with no prior criminal
record. He politely asked to have his handcuffs removed at the start
of the trial.

Surprisingly, none of the three attorneys retained by Sargsyan showed
up for today’s trial. Harutyun Sargsyan’s father Samvel Sargsyan,
a former police chief for the Ani District, told the judge that the
attorneys outside the country but that they would return by the end
of January.

The accused thus asked for a postponement. Judge Martin Saroyan
sustained the motion and scheduled the next court date for February 5.

GRIGORY KARASIN AND OLEG ESAYAN DISCUSSED ARMENIAN-RUSSIAN INTERACTION

19:30, 15 January, 2013

YEREVAN, JANUARY 15, ARMENPRESS: Extraordinary and plenipotentiary
Armenian Ambassador to Russia Oleg Esayan had a meeting with Deputy
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Grigory Karasin. As reports
Armenpress referring to the press service of Russian Foreign Ministry,
current issues of Armenian-Russian interaction have been discussed.

Interlocutors also expressed their viewpoints on a number of current
issues of the international and CIS agenda.

SARGSYAN: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SHOULD CONSOLIDATE AROUND ARMY

YEREVAN, January 16. /ARKA/. The public administration system should
be consolidated around the armed forces, Armenian president Serzh
Sargsyan said at an extended meeting of Armenian ministry of defence.

Representatives of legislative, executive and judicial authorities
participated in the meeting.

According to the president, Armenia managed to transfer from military
formations to a regular army, and the new objective is to consolidate
all public management around the armed forces.

“While strictly following the democratic principle of civil control
over the armed forces, we should, within the bounds of the law,
consolidate the special role that army has in our state,” the
Commander-in-Chief said.

In case of any serious security threat all security, defence and law
enforcement agencies, including the police, rescue services, their
civil divisions and others should be able to give a consolidated
response, have comparable procedures and complementary technical
facilities, the president said.

Sargsyan said that natural links between the army and the society
should be facilitated, particularly to supply the army with the newest
scientific developments. Apart from this, military students should
be allowed to enter civil higher schools, and vice versa.

The first priority is to provide the armed forces with modern arms
and equipment.

“For this we should consolidated the links between the army and the
economy, and support the military industry,” the Commander-in-Chief
said. -0–

NAGORNO-KARABAKH: OLD CONFLICT IS NEITHER GONE NOR FORGOTTEN

,0,4875903.story
January 16, 2013, 2:00 a.m.

Armenian children play in the ruins of ancient Shusha, a village
destroyed during the 1991-94 war between Armenians and Azerbaijanis
for Nagorno-Karabakh. The remote mountain enclave remains in dispute
nearly two decades after a cease-fire froze fighting. (Yuri Kozyrev /
For The Times / January 16, 2013) By Carol J. Williams

Sporadic sniper fire over sandbagged trenches that separate Armenians
and Azerbaijanis across the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
has been a routine feature of daily life throughout the 19 years that
the two sides have grudgingly observed a cease-fire.

But the harassing potshots and provocative power plays have taken
on a more ominous feel in recent weeks as pressure mounts on both
sides of the “frozen conflict” for uncompromised victory in one of
the world’s most bitter armed standoffs.

It was 25 years ago next month that seething hatred boiled over
in Azerbaijan’s second-largest city, Sumgait, and majority Azeri
nationalists slaughtered 31 Armenians in an outpouring of rage
against their dominance in remote and strategically insignificant
Nagorno-Karabakh.

The approaching anniversary, a coinciding presidential election in
Armenia and the resettling of Armenian refugees from Syria in the
disputed territory have stoked simmering resentment and spurred
concern that another deadly clash may be on the horizon.

A 1991-94 war took an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced more than a
million before the cease-fire was arranged. The United States, Russia
and France agreed to oversee negotiations on a permanent resolution.

The problem, those familiar with the obscure but virulently emotional
conflict explain, is that none of the parties is satisfied with the
status quo of international recognition that the enclave is Azerbaijani
territory but under Armenian control. Nor will either side make even
symbolic concessions to break the nearly two-decade impasse.

A look at the map of the Caucasus region provides insight into the
manipulations of Josef V. Stalin that nourished the roots of the
conflict. Although Armenians had managed to stave off aggressive
forays by the Persian, Ottoman and Russian empires for the better
part of two millennia, their autonomous enclave was made part of the
Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic after the Bolsheviks consolidated
control over the region in the early 1920s. Stalin served as commissar
of nationalities before ascending to the Kremlin, and he executed a
divide-and-conquer strategy to keep nationalism in check. The move
also was meant as a gesture to Turkey, awarding the enclave to its
Azeri allies instead of the Armenian targets of the 1915 genocide.

Ethnic resentment percolated under the lid of Communist repression
until the 1980s, when reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev
opened Pandora’s box with his campaigns for perestroika and glasnost
that encouraged confrontation of society’s ills, not sweeping them
under the carpet.

Isolated, impoverished and far from the oil bonanza transforming
eastern Azerbaijan, one might wonder why Nagorno-Karabakh is so
fiercely coveted by either side.

“It’s a fantastically important trade route, not only for energy but
for shipping and other issues,” Lawrence Sheets, the International
Crisis Group’s director for the South Caucasus, said of the strategic
territory where Europe and Asia meet. “Azerbaijan and Armenia have
been in a state of war for more than 20 years. There’s a cease-fire,
but if the conflict were to re-erupt on a larger scale, you’re talking
about possibly a regional war that could drag in very important
regional powers.”

U.S. oil companies have significant investments in Azerbaijan, as well
as important emotional ties to Armenia, with as many Armenians living
in the United States as in the ancestral homeland. Russia also needs
peace to conduct its shipping and naval operations in the Caspian and
Black Seas that flank the region. The expanding economic ties between
Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, and Iran draw another influential iron
into the fire. And Turkey, finally willing to talk of restoring ties
with Armenia after a nearly century-long hiatus, insists that the
Armenians give up the disputed enclave as a precondition.

While sober-minded observers see nothing to be gained by either
Armenia or Azerbaijan from a rekindling of the conflict, that danger
persists in the absence of a negotiated end to a dispute that has
often bordered on the hysterical.

On Monday, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev
accused Armenia of “an act of provocation” in settling Armenian
refugees from the Syrian civil war in Nagorno-Karabakh in an attempt to
“change the demographic situation in the region.”

Robert Avetisyan, permanent representative of Nagorno-Karabakh at the
enclave’s diplomatic mission in Washington, denounced the claim as
Azerbaijan’s attempt to politicize a humanitarian rescue of those
fleeing bombardment of Syria’s main city, Aleppo, home to about
80,000 ethnic Armenians. Although thousands have turned to Armenia
for aid, only about 30 families have been settled in Nagorno-Karabakh,
Avetisyan said.

Added to the recent pressure rising in the enclave is a newly rebuilt
airport near the capital, Stepanakert, that Avetisyan said would be
put into operation soon, whether Azerbaijan backs down or not from
threats to deny use of Azerbaijani airspace.

Despite the mutually disadvantageous standoffs and steady gusher of
accusations, the stunted arbitration of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe is about all that stands between the rivals
and reignited fighting, said Olga Oliker, associate director of Rand
Corp.’s International Security and Defense Policy Center.

“Nobody likes the status quo” of Armenian occupation of territory
recognized as Azerbaijani, Oliker said. “But nobody can see any way
to resolve it.”

WILL THERE BE A PARADE OF PLANETS?

JANUARY 15, 2013 13:19

The party called National Security – actually, Garnik Isagulyan, since
it surely is one of those “man-parties” – has made a statement, in
which a short description of the current political situation is made.

One of the main theses is that only the triumvirate of the Armenian
National Congress (ANC) rallies, the Prosperous Armenia Party (PAP)
finances and the

Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) ideas could have competed
with the Republican Party of Armenia. The definition is beautiful;
if such a unity had been there, the upcoming election would certainly
have been in an atmosphere of strong rivalry. However, the obstacles
to that triumvirate are not only subjective – the personal ambitions
of those parties’ leaderships, as Mr. Isagulyan puts it – but also
objective. In particular, the source of the PAP finances is the
same as the RPA finances, thus, they cannot oppose each other in
the long run. The ARF ideas are too archaic and stem from the 19th
century struggle for independence; it is hard to integrate in the
modern political life with a “group of highland horsemen,” and those
who are not “from highlands” are as cynical as the rest. As for the
ANC, the resource of rallies is prone to wearing away. As far as the
Congress is concerned, it has existed for quite a long time; neither
the National Democratic Union (NDU) nor Manucharyan have been able to
attract the “audience’s” attention with the same content, basically
correct speeches – robbers, gangsters, one should get rid of them as
soon as possible, otherwise… – for such a long time as the ANC did.

However, let me repeat that the scheme suggested in the above-mentioned
statement, “money-idea-masses,” is absolutely correct; it is the only
way of being efficient opposition. The problem is with combining
those three; the masses don’t care for ideas, rich people think of
them as an “unnecessary luxury” at best. Ideologists hate rich people
as a rule and look down on the masses. Literate people usually don’t
have finances, and it is often easier for rich people to adapt to
the vicious morals of the times than to put their businesses in
jeopardy. In a nutshell, combining those three factors is like a
“parade of planets,” which happens very seldom.

However, achieving such a “parade” should not be the goal of the
opposition, i.e. those who struggle for power, alone. All normal
citizens, all thinking people should be concerned about that. When
they start to dictate the agenda to the political elite, everything
will fall into place. Moreover, without tangible shocks.

ARAM ABRAHAMYAN

ARMENIA PLANS TO ESTABLISH CAR ASSEMBLY LINE WITH IRAN

news.am
January 16, 2013 | 02:05

Armenia stands ready to interact with Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province
in the production of automobiles. Governor Suren Khachatryan of
Armenia’s Syunik Region stated this on Tuesday in Tabriz, Iran,
Fars News Agency of Iran reports.

“By way of creating a new assembly line for Iranian automobiles, Syunik
Region could contribute to the introduction of [the province of] East
Azerbaijan’s industry to the international market,” Khachatryan said.

He noted that both countries possess a significant potential to
increase joint investments. Also, Armenia is a member of the World
Trade Organization, and its GDP reaches $9.4 billion.