Author: Kalantarian Kevo

MP questions identities and confession of Georgian high ranks
Batumi News
June 11 2004
The interest of the majoritarian deputy from Zugdidi, Gocha Pipia,
in the ethnic and religious identities of the future ministers and
their parents, called forth anxieties among the deputies. Several
MPs left the session in protest.
Kakha Bendukidze, Minister of Economics, commented on Pipia as a
“mad” and “a man of evil conscious”, – before leaving the session.
“A madman rushed out and demanded the ministers to submit their parents
identities. I see myself it absolutely unacceptable, and he would be
jailed in any honoring itself state”, – Bendukidze said. “If anyone is
interested how I feel with the fact that my mother is Armenian, I have
always been and will always be proud with that”, – Zurab Zhvania said.
Pipia himself, believes, that presence of those deputies, who hide
their identity, is dangerous at the state levers. “Those individuals,
who are disguising their genuine identities, have complexes”, – Pipia
said. He recalled the internet sources, criticizing John Kerry for
disguising that he is Jew, claiming himself as an Anglo Sax. “When
everything is being sold out in Georgia, I have a right to ask,
are these people, selling out national property, Georgians?” –
Pipia argues.
“Religious education of our future generation should be based on
the Christian Orthodox belief, attacking the Orthodox Church on the
name of democracy is unacceptable”, – Pipia said, questioning the
confession of Kakha Lomaya, Georgian Minister of Education.

Saving Private Ivan: Mike Davis Remember Normandy’s heroes – but also that
the Red army played the decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany
The Guardian – United Kingdom
Jun 11, 2004
The decisive battle for the liberation of Europe began 60 years ago
this month when a Soviet guerrilla army emerged from the forests and
bogs of Belorussia to launch a bold surprise attack on the mighty
Wehrmacht’s rear.
The partisan brigades, including many Jewish fighters and
concentration-camp escapees, planted 40,000 demolition charges. They
devastated the vital rail lines linking German Army Group Centre to
its bases in Poland and Eastern Prussia.
Three days later, on June 22 1944, the third anniversary of Hitler’s
invasion of the Soviet Union, Marshal Zhukov gave the order for the
main assault on German front lines. Twenty-six thousand heavy guns
pulverised German forward positions. The screams of the Katyusha
rockets were followed by the roar of 4,000 tanks and the battle cries
(in more than 40 languages) of 1.6 million Soviet soldiers. Thus
began Operation Bagration, an assault over a 500-mile-long front.
This “great military earthquake”, as the historian John Erickson called
it, finally stopped in the suburbs of Warsaw as Hitler rushed elite
reserves from western Europe to stem the Red tide in the east. As a
result, American and British troops fighting in Normandy would not
have to face the best-equipped Panzer divisions.
But what American has ever heard of Operation Bagration? June 1944
signifies Omaha Beach, not the crossing of the Dvina River. Yet the
Soviet summer offensive was several times larger than Operation
Overlord (the invasion of Normandy), both in the scale of forces
engaged and the direct cost to the Germans.
By the end of summer, the Red army had reached the gates of Warsaw
as well as the Carpathian passes commanding the entrance to central
Europe. Soviet tanks had caught Army Group Centre in steel pincers
and destroyed it. The Germans would lose more than 300,000 men in
Belorussia alone. Another huge German army had been encircled and
would be annihilated along the Baltic coast. The road to Berlin had
been opened.
Thank Ivan. It does not disparage the brave men who died in the North
African desert or the cold forests around Bastogne to recall that 70%
of the Wehrmacht is buried not in French fields but on the Russian
steppes. In the struggle against Nazism, approximately 40 “Ivans”
died for every “Private Ryan”. Scholars now believe that as many as 27
million Soviet soldiers and citizens perished in the second world war.
Yet the ordinary Soviet soldier – the tractor mechanic from Samara,
the actor from Orel, the miner from the Donetsk, or the high-school
girl from Leningrad – is invisible in the current celebration and
mythologisation of the “greatest generation”.
It is as if the “new American century” cannot be fully born without
exorcising the central Soviet role in last century’s epochal victory
against fascism. Indeed, most Americans are shockingly clueless about
the relative burdens of combat and death in the second world war. And
even the minority who understand something of the enormity of the
Soviet sacrifice tend to visualise it in terms of crude stereotypes of
the Red army: a barbarian horde driven by feral revenge and primitive
Russian nationalism. Only GI Joe and Tommy are seen as truly fighting
for civilised ideals of freedom and democracy.
It is thus all the more important to recall that – despite Stalin, the
NKVD and the massacre of a generation of Bolshevik leaders – the Red
army still retained powerful elements of revolutionary fraternity. In
its own eyes, and that of the slaves it freed from Hitler, it was the
greatest liberation army in history. Moreover, the Red army of 1944
was still a Soviet army. The generals who led the breakthrough on the
Dvina included a Jew (Chernyakovskii), an Armenian (Bagramyan), and
a Pole (Rokossovskii). In contrast to the class-divided and racially
segregated American and British forces, command in the Red army was
an open, if ruthless, ladder of opportunity.
Anyone who doubts the revolutionary elan and rank-and-file humanity
of the Red army should consult the extraordinary memoirs of Primo
Levi (The Reawakening) and KS Karol (Between Two Worlds). Both hated
Stalinism but loved the ordinary Soviet soldier and saw in her/him
the seeds of socialist renewal.
So, after George Bush’s recent demeaning of the memory of D-day to
solicit support for his war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve
decided to hold my own pri vate commemoration.
I will recall, first, my Uncle Bill, the salesman from Columbus, hard
as it is to imagine such a gentle soul as a hell-for-leather teenage
GI in Normandy. Second – as I’m sure my Uncle Bill would’ve wished –
I will remember his comrade Ivan.
The Ivan who drove his tank through the gates of Auschwitz and battled
his way into Hitler’s bunker. The Ivan whose courage and tenacity
overcame the Wehrmacht, despite the deadly wartime errors and crimes
of Stalin. Two ordinary heroes: Bill and Ivan. Obscene to celebrate
the first without also commemorating the second.
Mike Davis teaches American history at the University of California at
Irvine and is an editor New Left Review; his latest book is Dead Cities
[email protected]

COMPETITION FOR JOURNALISTS ANNOUNCED
A1 Plus | 21:10:04 | 07-06-2004 | Social |
OSCE Yerevan office and Environment and Information Center / Orkhus/
has announced a competition for TV and press journalists.
To be eligible for Human Rights and Environment competition is an
applicant has to submit a 20-minute video-clip. If he/she is a TV
reporter, and a 1000-word article, if he/she is a press journalist,
produced/written in 2004.

Contemporary Iranian Artwork Go on Display in Armenia
Mehr News Agency, Iran
June 6 2004
TEHRAN June 6 (MNA) — A selection of artwork by Iranian contemporary
artists are to go on display June 12 at the Yerevan National Art
Museum, Armenia.
According to the Public Relations Office of the Tehran Museum of
Contemporary Arts, a total of 60 paintings, statues and installation
work by contemporary artists will be showcased for two weeks.
Paintings by Marco Gregorian, Mohammad-Ibrahim Ja’fari, Edmund
Ayvazian, Kamran Katuzian, Sirak Melkonian, Gholam-Hossein Nami,
Mahdi Hosseini, Gizella Varga Sina’i, and Sharareh Salehi, sculptures
by Parviz Tanavoli, Fatemeh Emdadian, and Shideh Tami as well as
an installation work by Bita Fayyazi are among the works to be put
on display.
An exhibition of artwork by Armenian artists was displayed at Tehran
Museum of Contemporary Arts in 2001.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
June 2 2004
Armenia Aviation up in the Air
After a string of managers and failed projects Armenia’s national
airline is formally bankrupt.
By Rita Karapetian in Yerevan (CRS No. 236, 02-Jun-04)
The clue to the state of Armenia’s civil aviation industry can be
found in Equatorial Guinea, where six Armenian pilots are expected
to stand trial shortly, accused of spying and plotting a coup d’etat.
The pilots deny these charges, and the Armenian government claims
that they were in the area for perfectly innocent reasons. Foreign
ministry spokesman Gamlet Gasparian said that dozens of Armenian
pilots are being forced to find work in Africa because the state
aviation company Armenian Airlines, AA, has been declared bankrupt
and is facing a Russian takeover.
The company’s management now has just over a week to present a recovery
package to the Armenian economic court by June 12, or it will face
certain liquidation.
Opposition politicians and industry analysts are furious. “Smart
operators from the aviation industry with government support have
ruined a whole strategically important sector of the economy,” said
Dmitry Adbashian, a former AA director, who now runs the National
Aviation Union.
Most of the company’s employees have since lost their jobs and
income. According to Marietta Kazarian, head of the airline’s legal
department, the number of company employees has dropped from 1,500
to 100 people.
“Of the 300 members of the flying team, only around 30 have secured
jobs with different airlines; the rest are looking into opportunities
abroad, ” said Kazarian.
For many pilots, this could be the end of the road. “I am too old
to change my profession and start again from scratch, but I am too
young to retire,” said 51-year-old pilot Genrikh Pogosian.
According to Arsen Avetisian, general director of AA, the company
owes its staff ten months’ wages – around 250,000 US dollars in all.
“The court has decided that debts will mainly be repaid after the
company property is sold,” he told IWPR, adding that the exact scale
of the firm’s debts would only be made clear when the liquidation
process begins, but it is estimated to be between 12 and 30 million
dollars. Some opposition figures are alleging that the bankruptcy
has been deliberately planned. “Since 1998 the authorities have
been carrying out a policy of artificial bankruptcy for AA,” claimed
parliamentary deputy Tatul Manaserian.
“Debts have mounted up so as to artificially lower the price of this
company, which many people want to get their hands on,” he added.
Justice minister David Harutiunian rejected this charge, but
did concede that there had been “serious mistakes in the company
management”.
Armenian Airlines was founded in 1993 and given the status of national
carrier. The company inherited highly qualified staff, a mass of
equipment and 23 planes.
Former director Adbashian said he had drawn up plans to make the
airline, as well as Zvartnots airport and the state-run refuelling
company GSM, commercially competitive. But he was sacked and his
programme was not implemented, something which he said “pushed civil
aviation towards collapse”.
The company has been in financial crisis since 1998. AA lost out both
to competitors and to other state companies, and the fuel supplied by
GSM was expensive. Opposition parliamentary deputy Agasi Arshakian said
that GSM used its monopoly “to sell one tonne of aviation kerosene
at a price which was 100 dollars higher than the average price in
the region.”
Trade union leader Garik Mkrtchian says that a heavy blow came with
the transfer of Zvartnots airport to the management of Argentinian
businessman Eduardo Ernekian.
According to an agreement signed at the beginning of 2003, Ernekian
pledged to invest up to 100 million dollars in reconstruction and
development of the airport over 15 years. But in practice, almost
immediately after it took over the management, Ernekian’s company
increased prices on fuel, plane parking and ground service.
AA has also suffered from having 15 general directors over the course
of a decade, most of whom were not industry specialists.
“General directors who presided over mounting company debts were
replaced one after another, but no one was sacked or made to answer
for this,” AA manager Ashot Berberian told IWPR.
In March last year, the Armenian government took a decision to transfer
ownership of AA to the private Russian airline company Armavia. After
nearly 70 per cent of Armavia’s shares were sold to another Russian
company, Sibir-Avia, that company then took a controlling stake in AA.
Opposition politicians are outraged. “Armavia cannot be the national
carrier, as the controlling shareholding belongs to Russian business,
and the rest of the shares belong to a Russian citizen,” said
Manaserian.
Another deputy, Grant Khachatrian, believes that the takeover threatens
the sovereignty of landlocked Armenia, which has two closed borders
because of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict.
But the government maintains that the sell-off makes commercial
sense. Justice minister David Harutiunian said, “The state is a bad
businessman – only privatisation can guarantee the profitability
of aviation.”
Rita Karapetian is a correspondent for Noyan Tapan news agency
in Yerevan.

Ottawa Citizen
May 31, 2004 Monday Final Edition
Montreal school bombing sparks inter-faith concert for peace:
Synagogue chooses to ‘do something practical’;
will raise money for books
by Bob Harvey
Ottawa faith groups hope to sow a little more peace in the world.
On Sunday at 7 p.m., Jews, Mormons, Roman Catholics, Armenian
Christians, Hindus and Muslims will join in a Concert for Peace at
the Beth Shalom Synagogue on Chapel Street.
Daniel Benlolo, the cantor at Beth Shalom, and the event’s
co-chairman, said that after the fire-bombing of Montreal’s United
Talmud Torah School on April 5, “we decided we wanted to do something
practical.”
Some of the money raised by the concert will go toward buying books
to replace those destroyed in the school library, and the rest will
be doled out by the participating groups to any project that might
help make peace.
Mr. Benlolo said “people think all Jews and all Arabs are the same,
and we’re trying to prove otherwise. We hope people will stop and say
there are some good people in the world.”
A note found at the scene of the fire-bombing linked it to Israel’s
killing of the founder of Hamas, a Palestinian resistance movement.
Mr. Benlolo said that when he met Palestinians, he sang his songs,
and the Palestinians sang theirs. “That way, camaraderie was
established.”
He said it is not just the Middle East that faces conflict today.
“We’ve learned that there is terrorism in cities all over the world.”
Mr. Benlolo said the concert will be strictly entertainment and “is
not going to make a huge difference in the world, but it is
definitely going to make a difference to some people, and these
people are going to be speaking about it to other people.”
The choirs, the musicians and the synagogue are waiving any payment,
and even the synagogue’s custodian is working for free.
Tickets for the peace concert and the dessert reception that follows
are $10. The synagogue’s auditorium has 740 seats, and there are only
125 seats still left. But Mr. Benlolo says that, if necessary, he
will open the doors to the synagogue and provide more seats.
Tickets can be obtained from the participating groups: the Jewish
community at 789-3501; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 832-0101; the Roman Catholic Cathedral at 241-7496; the
Diocese of the Armenian Church of Canada, at 224-8117; the Hindu
Temple at 822-1531; and the Ottawa Muslim Association, 722-8763.

The Moscow Times
May 28 – June 3, 2004
Tug of War
Tracking the Caspian’s history from different perspectives, two books draw a
common picture of foreign imperialism.
By Kim Iskyan
Before I left Moscow for the Caucasus a few years ago with plans
to dabble in journalism, a friend with experience throughout the
Caspian field begged of me: “Please promise me you’ll never use
the words ‘Great Game’ in a Caspian story.” The term had become a
geopolitical cliche, he said, thanks to journalists who spent one
week in the region spouting off the usual blather about how ironic
it is that the 19th-century battles between Russia and Great Britain
for control over Central Asia are being replayed — before buying a
carpet or two and going home.
Clearly, Lutz Kleveman, author of “The New Great Game: Blood and Oil
in Central Asia,” is in flagrant violation of my friend’s rule. But
Kleveman, a journalist, should arguably receive a pass, as he moves
well beyond the tired formulas that plague coverage of Central Asia
and the Caucasus (or the entire former Soviet Union, for that matter)
to effectively assess the contradictory and nuanced forces that shape
the region.
Foremost among these forces for Kleveman is oil, the “devil’s
tears.” Taking the reader through a wide swath of the Caspian area,
Kleveman creates context with easily digestible historical overviews
(mercifully light on the Great Game analogies); discussions with local
oligarchs, power players and politicians; and dusty, dangerous treks
to the Caspian to kick its soft underbelly of oil. Along the way,
Kleveman underscores the many compromises that the developed world —
and the United States, in particular — has made in the name of oil
or one of its auxiliary ends: cozying up to the strong-arm antics
of Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, ignoring the catastrophe of Chechnya,
and looking the other way as Nursultan Nazarbayev rewrites the book on
corruption in cahoots with American oil companies, to name just a few.
Meanwhile, Kleveman suggests that the answer could be found in Iran, if
only handled the right way. A Persian pipeline would be a significant
improvement on the current options — Russia, the South Caucasus,
Afghanistan, all of which have been the subject of endless political
machinations — as it would be shorter, cheaper and safer. But these
are pipe dreams, he admits, given present perceptions of the United
States. “The Americans and their double standards: We Iranians have
a more open democracy than any of the Arab sheikhdoms with whom the
Americans are aligned!” complains a newspaper editor in Tehran whom
Kleveman interviews.
Itar-Tass
And all for what? According to the U.S. Energy Department, the Caspian
Sea region has roughly 3 percent of the proven global oil reserves
and 4 percent of natural gas reserves. Kleveman estimates that the
Caspian could provide between 5 percent and 8 percent of total global
oil production by 2015. That might sound like small beer, but it’s not:
Fresh, marginal oil supplies can have a disproportionate influence,
in part by cutting into the ability of oil cartel OPEC, which controls
the majority of global oil production, to affect prices. With stability
still elusive in the Middle East, energy resource diversification
— even if it’s only a few percent here and there — has become a
geopolitical mantra for oil and gas importers. And China’s voracious,
ever-escalating demand for energy exerts an unrelenting upward pressure
on prices, leading to stiff competition for oil assets.
The timing of Kleveman’s travels was in some ways highly fortuitous, as
he was on the front lines of the post-Sept. 11, 2001, surge of interest
in Central Asia and the Caspian — parts of the world that, just
five years earlier, had barely registered on the global geopolitical
radar screen. But as the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003,
elevating the fight for access to fossil fuels to a whole new level
by coupling it with the struggle against terrorism, Kleveman was just
dotting the i’s of his final draft; consequently, Iraq is accorded only
a hastily written epilogue. But Kleveman’s insistence on the primacy
of oil politics was, if anything, further strengthened by subsequent
events — particularly the emerging bankruptcy of claims that the war
had been predicated on uncovering Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed, fossil fuels are important. But, at the end of the day,
the war on terror is about more than energy imperialism. Kleveman’s
suggestion that oil politics dictate every last dimension of economic,
geopolitical and human endeavor in the region is, perhaps, a bit of
an exaggeration, even with Big Oil in the White House.
Thomas Dunne Books
Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia By Monica
Whitlock Thomas Dunne Books 304 Pages. $27.95
In “Land Beyond the River: The Untold Story of Central Asia,” Monica
Whitlock, who has reported from the region for the BBC for much of
the past 12 years, takes a very different approach to describing the
forces that shaped Central Asia. While Kleveman’s book is equal parts
travelogue, contemporary history and political analysis, Whitlock
builds from the ground up, tracing the “Zelig”-like progression of
a few generations of two colorful Central Asian families through
the turmoil and travails of 20th-century Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
Afghanistan to show the impact of the region’s various struggles on
the individual. Later, shifting into reportorial territory that seems
more stylistically familiar to her, Whitlock describes the Russian
involvement in Afghanistan and the post-Soviet evolution of the region,
particularly of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Also in contrast to Kleveman, neither oil nor the Great Game figures
much into Whitlock’s vision. Her primary interest is in the history
of Russian involvement in the region, rather than on the global
geopolitical tug of war that currently characterizes the area. The
region she portrays is one that has always been at the periphery, with
change evolving very slowly — and, even then, only at the (frequently
extraordinarily brutal) whim of the Soviet Union. Arguably, the Soviet
Union’s role as key agent of external change is now being assumed
by the United States and friends, in view of the recent invasion of
Afghanistan and the close relationship that has developed between
the United States and Uzbekistan.
The enduring irony of all this is that, for much of Russia (and for
Moscow in particular), Central Asia and the Caucasus remain on the far
fringes of relevance. Much as U.S. policy toward Mexico is far more
important to Mexico than it is to the United States, the relationship
between Russia and the Caspian area remains highly unequal to this day.
Whitlock helps explain how the Caspian area became such a mess,
while Kleveman takes confusion and borderline anarchy as his point
of departure. But both books share an underlying message: that the
United States is the latest on the laundry list of countries with
imperial designs, albeit of different stripes, on the region — and
that, if history is any guide, the odds are heavily stacked against
sustainable success.
Kim Iskyan is a freelance journalist based in Armenia.

No justice when fascinating lives are crammed into a short slot : Review
by Ian Bell
The Herald (Glasgow)
May 28, 2004
One Day of War: This World
BBC2, 9.00pm
No Going Back
Channel 4, 8.00pm
If One Day of War was to be believed, it isn’t hard to become a
terrorist. An accident of birth, a brutal government, or even the
desire to run a brutal government of your very own: given any one of
these you have a good chance of winding up as one of the two people
who die every minute because of war. Alternatively, you could be
helping someone else to join the silent ranks of the dead.
This was a documentary brilliant in its conception but shaky in its
execution. The idea was to film 16 people at war in various uncongenial
parts of the planet on a single day and provide a snapshot of global
conflict. The trouble was that the attempt to cram so many stories
into 90 minutes led to potted biographies and potted history.
If ever a film demanded context, it was this one. We kicked off,
for example, with Comrade Grace, an 18-year-old in the ranks of the
New People’s Army in the Philippines. This movement’s claim to fame
is that it is “the world’s longest -running active group of communist
rebels”. For 30 years they’ve been slogging it out in the jungle. We
heard that they once attacked American bases, but these days harass
the government. Why?
With some tales, it is true, you could just about work out the
fighter’s motivation. Shushila Magar, a 24-year-old Nepalese woman,
was clearly sincere. You have to be dedicated when the only weapons
you have are flintlock rifles. Equally, if you live in a feudal state
that condemns half its people to exist on less than a dollar a day,
you tend to be militant.
Nevertheless, when Shushila said that modern weapons don’t matter if
you had ideology as a weapon, you suspected that her group might be
competing with the New People’s Army for revolutionary longevity. The
Nepalese fighters were also described as Maoists. Yet again, I would
have loved someone to explain what that means in the 21st century.
These were stories of our times, but they were, as often as not, the
same old story. Poverty and oppression fuel rebellion, the revolution
sours and “liberation” soon resembles the same old tyranny. You
couldn’t quibble with the heroism of Mousa Ibragim Osman, a fighter
with the Sudan Liberation Army, nine of whose brothers have died
while an Arab Muslim government has been ethnically cleansing black
Muslims. You wondered, though, how the SLA would behave if they were
on top.
What was most striking about these conflicts, nevertheless, was the
world’s eagerness to forget them. Hands up who knew that the trench
warfare in Nagorno Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan has lasted
three times as long as the First World War? Corporal Albert Hinasyan,
an Armenian conscript, didn’t even try to explain what that one was
all about.
There were good wars and bad wars. You could feel for the Karen
National Liberation Army, who have been fighting for independence from
a genocidal Burmese government for 55 years. It wasn’t so easy to cheer
for Colombia’s FARC, a revolutionary corporation raking in $ 300m a
year from drugs, extortion and kidnapping. This documentary made each
of these conflicts seem like the same conflict. That was truly unjust.
Injustice was uppermost in the minds of Chris and Katie Day, ages
11 and 14 respectively, going on three. What, you wondered, did
Austria do to deserve this pair? Their father was fed up working 87
hours a week as a milkman; their mother had fallen in love with the
Austrian Alps. Together, the parents had sunk every penny they had,
plus £ 130,000 borrowed from a bank, into a mountain hotel. Were the
cherubs having it? They were not.
“I’m not goin’ to school ‘ere,” Katie announced before entering an
institution that should have demanded her instant deportation. The
boy, meanwhile, had to be lifted from the car. The dream was turning
into a nightmare, but the Day family had brought a little bit of hell
with them. Fun to watch, though, in a grisly sort of way.
GRAPHIC: CAMPAIGN: Roger Rosal speaks for the Philippines’ rebel group.

Ethnic communities in Abkhazia object to Georgian jurisdiction
Interfax
May 24 2004
Sukhumi. (Interfax) – Ethnic communities in Abkhazia are against plans
to restore Georgian jurisdiction over the self-proclaimed republic.
“The Russian, Armenian, Greek, Estonian, Ukrainian, Polish and German
communities in Abkhazia declare that the Georgian administration’s
hopes to gain support for their expansionist plans are unfounded,” says
a statement from Abkhazia’s ethnic communities circulated on Monday.
“The Georgian authorities, which are planning to ‘peacefully’
restore their jurisdiction over the territory of our republic, claim
that certain forces, including representatives of certain ethnic
communities in Abkhazia, allegedly support the intentions of this
potential aggressor,” the statement says.
“We, the various nationalities in Abkhazia, strongly support the
constitution of the Republic of Abkhazia, which proclaims independent,
sovereign and democratic development of our state,” the statement
says. “The multinational people of Abkhazia, who have had to struggle
for freedom and economic and cultural development, will not allow
anyone to encroach on their homeland, Apsny.”

RUSSIA TO KEEP MILITARY BASE IN ARMENIA, DEFENCE MINISTERS CONFIRM
RIA news agency, Moscow
20 May 04
Yerevan, 20 May: Russia has no plans to increase the number of
servicemen at its 102nd military base in Armenia, Russian Defence
Minister Sergey Ivanov told journalists today.
“We have no plans to increase the number of Russians stationed at the
102nd Russian base. This is the best number. It is not quantity but
quality and provision of weapons and equipment that is important,”
the minister said.
“We are striving to ensure that the 102nd base is well equipped
militarily and that it carries out combat training on schedule. We
attribute priority importance to this,” Ivanov underlined.
Armenian Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan, for his part, declared
that the Russian base would not be withdrawn from Armenia. Asked
about the possibility of a withdrawal of the Russian military base
from Armenian territory, Sarkisyan told journalists that he regarded
this as a purely rhetorical question.
“This is a question to which we already know the answer – no,”
Sarkisyan said. “We have repeatedly said that we regard military
relations with Russia as an integral part of our national security. I
can therefore give you a precise and clear answer – there will be no
withdrawal of the Russian base from Armenia.”