Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Armenia, Georgia has great potential in energy cooperation – Kaladze

YEREVAN, August 23. /ARKA/. Armenia and Georgia has great potential to
expand their cooperation in energy sector and intend to fulfill it,
Georgian minister of energy and vice-premier Kahka Kaladze said in
Yerevan.

After his meeting with the Armenian minister of energy Yervand
Zahkaryan on Friday Kaladze thanked Armenian colleagues for
cooperation and stressed the importance of energy ties between the
countries.

Zakharyan, in his turn, said the priority task is to increase volumes
of energy supplies between Armenia and Georgia. Under the respective
program, the new high-voltage line of 400 kilovolt is to bring today’s
capacity of 200 megawatt up to 700 megawatt

Armenian minister of energy stressed the importance of energy
cooperation in emergency cases and expressed gratitude to Georgia for
assistance in gas trunk breakdown repairs.

The report says Armenia, in her turn, gave a helping hand to Georgia
in a recent energy supply interruption.

Earlier, the deputy minister of energy of Armenia Yosif Isayan said
the new high-voltage line to Georgia to be commissioned by 2018 will
cost 330 million euros, of them 300 million will be spent on works in
Armenia and 30 million in the territory of Georgia. -0–

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Aug 22 2014

Sochi meeting reduces Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions

21 August 2014, 14:57 (GMT+05:00)
By Sara Rajabova

Finding a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is in the
spotlight of the international community due to the recent escalation
of tensions on contact line of Armenian-Azerbaijani troops.

The meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents mediated by
Russian president in the city Sochi was estimated to slow down the
tensions between the South Caucasus countries. However, the political
analysts’ have different views regarding the results of the talks.

Some of them say that the negotiations were unsuccessful, while others
believe that recent talks have resulted in the reduction of tensions
on Armenian-Azerbaijani frontline.

Head of the Caucasus Department of the CIS Institute Vladimir Yevseyev
said in an interview withDay.Az website that the main outcome of the
trilateral meeting of the Russian, Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents
was a significant easing of tensions on the front line.

Yevseyev said the recent developments on the contact line have
resulted in numerous casualties among military personnel.

He stressed that in case of aggravation of situation even more, the
armed conflict could have its own dynamics, and the likelihood of
involvement of Russia and Turkey was quite large.

“As a result, we could get in the South Caucasus regional war with
unpredictable consequences,” Yevseyev noted.

Another, Russian expert also considered that main result of the Sochi
meeting for South Caucasus countries was the reduction of tensions
around Karabakh.

“Of course, all the details of the meeting are still not known, but it
is clear that without the negotiations of IlhamAliyev, SerzhSargsyan
and Vladimir Putin, the number of the victims in the conflict zone
could increase,” Head of the Center for Analysis of international
politics under the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements
(IGSO), Russian political expert Michael Neyzhmakov said.

He said through negotiations in Sochi a large-scale armed
confrontation was avoided.

Speaking about Russia’s role in settling Armenian-Azerbaijani
disputes, Neyzhmakov noted that the Sochi meeting demonstrated
Russia’s role in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement and showed that
Moscow is returned to the active mediation in conflict resolution.

Neyzhmakov said Moscow is not interested in the transition of the
conflict in the “hot” phase.

He stressed that due to the Ukrainian crisis, the “hotter” Karabakh
conflict would bring Moscow more problems, as it could get involved in
two conflicts.

On Russia’s role in the conflict solution, another political analyst
said that with a mediation role on settling the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict Moscow tries to divert attention from the situation in
Russia.

Senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s DinuPatriciu Eurasia Center,
Sabine Freizer has recently said the recent violation of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani contact line gave Moscow the opportunity to
demonstrate its ability to promote war or peace in the South Caucasus.

She said the aggravation of tensions on Armenian-Azerbaijani frontline
helped Russia divert attention from southeastern Ukraine, where
Ukrainian troops are advancing against separatists.

“Moscow was very quick to assert itself as a sole mediator, summoning
the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents to Sochi. That act
circumvented the long-standing international forum for mediation on
Nagorno-Karabakh, the OSCE’s Minsk Group, which includes the U.S. and
French governments. This should sound familiar: In 2008, after Russia
invaded Georgia, it also then took the lead in the
Azerbaijani-Armenian talks, succeeding partly in reaffirming Russia’s
centrality and influence,” Freizer said.

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Aug 22 2014

Mudslide damages South Caucasus infrastructure

22 August 2014 – 7:03pm
Georgy Kalatozishvili. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza

The Georgian public these days is focusing on the tragedy in the
Darial Gorge rather than new charges brought against former president
Mikheil Saakashvili. The incident occurred on the Georgian military
road near the Russian border. According to employees of the local
customs office and hydroelectric power plant, the automatic alert
system established several months ago after a massive landslide
informed them about the coming mudslide.

This time the disaster was even more destructive. The Darial
hydroelectric power plant has been put out of action for ever, the
country’s former minister of energy Nino Chkhobadze said. It would be
impossible to relaunch it. Of course it may be rebuilt, but it would
take years to do so. The Darial hydroelectric power plant was
providing the Kazbek region with power. The region, which borders
North Ossetia, may not be big, but it is very important.

Two people have died. One was a Georgian national and another one
Turkish. The River Terek brought their bodies to Russian territory.
Several hundreds of people, including monks from the local monastery,
border guards, customs officers and workers who were trying to
modernize the Georgian military road, which connects Russia with
Georgia and Armenia, have been evacuated with the help of helicopters.

The mudslide broke the Russian-Georgian-Armenian gas pipeline. As a
result, Armenia was cut off from gas supplies. The incident occurred
just before Georgian Prime MInister Irakli Garibashvili’s visit to
Yerevan. It is no surprise that before leaving for Armenia the head of
the cabinet said that the restoration of the pipeline would be the
government’s top priority. According to information acquired by
Vestnik Kavkaza, the restoration work has already started and on
Saturday night Armenia will be able to receive gas in the necessary
amounts. Still, the tragedy shows how fragile the infrastructure in
the Darial Gorge is.

This is also true for the Georgian military road – the only land route
connecting Georgia and Armenia with Russia. The highway was destroyed
on several sites and the reconstruction will take at least two weeks,
the cabinet says.

The scale of the catastrophe becomes clear when one takes into
consideration the fact that President Giorgi Margelashvili and the
minister of the interior visited the region three times in the last
several days. The president tried to calm local residents, who have
been cut off from the rest of the country and examine the restoration
works, which continue despite unfavourable weather conditions.

The catastrophe hit the Darial Gorge at the wrong time. The number of
tourists arriving from Russia was on the increase. All of them took
the Georgian military road. In addition to that, Georgian agricultural
products were delivered to Russia via the Georgian military road as
well. After Russia banned EU and US food imports, Georgian producers
thought they would be able to increase apple, pear and persimmon
supplies to the country.

However the main problem is that the people now feel that a road of
vital importance is being undermined over and over again. Scientists
believe it may been caused by the damaged environment of the Main
Caucasus Ridge, the gradual melting of ice on Kazbek and natural
processes, which cannot be altered by humans.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
IWPR Caucasus Reporting #749
Aug 22 2014

Armenia’s Yezidis Reach Out to Iraqi Kin

Some argue that Armenians have a special responsibility to help given
their own tragic history.
By Gayane Lazarian – Caucasus

Members of Armenia’s 50,000-strong Yezidi community are urging their
government to do more to help their fellow-believers who are
threatened by Islamic insurgents in Iraq.

Some 400,000 Yezidis have fled their homes, either finding shelter in
Turkey or Syria, or seeking a safe place inside Iraq. The plight of
thousands of people in the Sinjar Mountains attracted world attention
and prompted Western airdrops of food and water.

News of their plight has sparked action among Armenia’s Yezidis.

“We talk to our brothers every day. Today we heard that the Islamists
issued an ultimatum to three Yezidi villages and gave them three days
to renounce their faith. The residents of two of the villages managed
to flee, but 80 men were killed in the third village, and the women
and girls were taken to the town of Tal Afar and sold into slavery,”
said Mamet Amiryan, deputy head of Armenia’s National Union of
Yezidis.

The world’s two million Yezidis, who speak a Kurdish language, are
spread throughout the Middle East. Their unique religion has
pre-Islamic roots and is connected to the ancient Zoroastrian faith.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – or the Islamic State as it now
styles itself – is intolerant of anything outside its own
fundamentalist Sunni views and has given the Yezidis a stark choice –
convert or die.

“The Iraqi government has even published reports that the Islamist
extremists buried 500 women and children alive and beheaded our
priests,” Boris Murazi, head of a Yezidi organisation called Minjar,
told IWPR.

A spokesman for President Serzh Sargsyan said on August 18 that
Armenia was deeply concerned by the reports of bloodshed.

“The president has ordered the foreign ministry and the heads of the
country’s diplomatic missions to redouble efforts to raise this
question at international level,” the spokesman said.

He said the government in Yerevan would consider sending humanitarian
aid to the refugees.

Murazi said that after meeting Yezidi community members, Deputy Prime
Minister Armen Gevorgyan promised that 50,000 US dollars would to be
spent on humanitarian aid.

“But he said we had to send it to Iraq ourselves,” Murazi said. “We
suggested giving the money to the United Nations, which is organising
aid distribution.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan said talks were ongoing
about how to get funds to the intended beneficiaries.

Murazi and others are comparing events in Iraq to the mass killings of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

“All this will be like the Armenian genocide if no one does anything
and the expulsion of the Yezidis continues,” he said. “The Armenians
managed to save one small corner of their homeland – modern-day
Armenia – but we won’t manage even that.”

Ruben Melkonyan, deputy head of the department of Oriental studies at
Yerevan State University, said Armenians needed to reach out and help
the Yezidis.

“If the genocide of the Armenians had been condemned, then there
wouldn’t have been new ones,” he said. “Until that happens, we will
continue to witness new genocides.”

Murazi said many of the displaced Yezidis would welcome a chance to
move to Armenia, just as many Christian Armenians from Syria have
done. But he said the government was blocking this because there is no
fast-track visa arrangement in place with Iraq.

“There are 15 empty houses in our villages, and we could put them
there,” said Alik Namoyan, head of the the Yezidi village of Mirak.
“We are ready to offer them assistance and give them everything they
need – provisions, bedding and livestock. What else could we do? Our
brothers are in trouble.”

Gayane Lazarian is a journalist with ArmeniaNow.com.

Armenia’s President visited “HASK” Byurakan campsite

19:30, 22 August, 2014

YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan
visited Byurakan campsite of the National Scout Movement of Armenia
“HASK”. The President toured the territory of the campsite, got
acquainted with the conditions and the daily life of the scouts. Serzh
Sargsyan also attended the closing ceremony of the nationwide
Jamboree.

The responsible member of the National Scout Movement of Armenia
Hrachya Shmavonyan told reporters that in 2011, by the
Government decision, an additional one hectare area had been allocated
to the National Scout Movement of Armenia, which was designed for the
construction of the campsite. “Since international Jamborees take
place once every 4 years, this year we have an unprecedented large
number of participants, 800 scouts from 18 countries of the world.
Building this campsite, we were able to create those conditions. It is
constructed for 400 people, while the first section is designed for
about 600 people.

In other words, we will be able to receive 1000 scouts. This is a very
good thing for us, because finally we managed to improve our
conditions,” as reports “Armenpress”, said Shmavonyan.

,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1280&bih=603&cad=h

Yerevan municipality to tighten grip upon food supplies to kindergartens

YEREVAN, August 22. /ARKA/. Yerevan’s municipality will tighten grip
upon the foods supplied to kindergartens, Gayane Soghomonyan, chief of
the municipality’s division in charge of general education, told
journalists on Friday.

In recent days, the Armenian Police Department reported that Edward
Mkhitaryan, an individual entrepreneur, opened an enterprise in
Yerevan for processing and packing chicken meat, where a rotten meat
was treated with vinegar and chemicals.

It has become known that Mkhitaryan supplied this meat to some
kindergartens of Yerevan’s Nor-Nork district.

“Over the last three years the city authorities paid special attention
to the foods supplied to kindergartens and to their storage conditions
and everything is under their control,” she said. “Therefore this
occasion ahs shocked the municipality.”

Soghomonyan said that all the agencies have reacted to the incident
quite quickly – inspections have been conducted in other kindergartens
and meals there have been examined.

She vowed that the city authorities will be steadfast in their
determination to prevent similar occasions.
There are 162 municipal kindergartens in Yerevan. –0—-

Greek parliament to discuss Genocide criminalization bill

16:00 22/08/2014 >> LAW

On August 26-27, the Greek parliament is scheduled to discuss a bill
criminalizing denial of the genocide of Pontian Greeks and Armenians
and the genocide in Asia Minor. Greek Minister of Justice Charalampos
Athanassiou included the relevant article into the law on fight
against xenophobia.

As reported by Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, the Greek Minister said, in
part, “According to the final edition of the draft law, the denial of
the genocides recognized by the Greek parliament will be considered a
crime. Besides, the denial of the genocides recognized by the Greek
and international courts will also be criminalized.”

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France,
Lithuania, the Italian Chamber of Deputies, majority of U.S. states,
parliaments of Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Belgium and Wales, National
Council of Switzerland, Chamber of Commons of Canada, Polish Sejm,
Vatican, European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

Unknown whether 7 injured Armenian soldiers will return to duty

11:29, 22.08.2014

YEREVAN. – Four of the seven Armenian military servicemen, who were
wounded on the Karabakh-Azerbaijan Line of Contact in the past one
month, already have been discharged from the Muratsan military
hospital in capital city Yerevan.

Armenia defense minister’s press secretary Artsrun Hovhannisyan told
the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“Three are still continuing treatment in hospital; they are in good
condition, too, but they still need treatment. The other discharged
patients are currently on vacation. It will be determined in due time
as to who will return to [military] duty, [and] who will not,”
Hovhannisyan said.

The abovementioned wounded military servicemen are Captains Srapion
Melkonyan and Sargis Stepanyan, and Privates Armen Petrosyan, Norayr
Kamalyan, Grigor Grigoryan, Varuzhan Margaryan, and Benik Petrosyan.

Azerbaijan had recently carried out several attempts of sabotage
infiltration on the Line of Contact, but the adversary was forced to
retreat every time. Official Baku had informed about the death of 26
and the wounding of about thirty soldiers.

Armenia News – NEWS.am

ARMENIE
La production de brandy d’Arménie a diminué de 4,6%

La production de brandy d’Arménie a diminué de 4,6% pour un total de 4
735 900 litres entre Janvier et Avril 2014, par rapport à la même
période l’année précédente, a rapporté ArmStat.

La production de vin a diminué de 8,7% à 1 546 500 litres dans la
période considérée.

La production de vodka a augmenté de 13,6% à 2 831 400 litres.

Un total de 91 900 litres de champagne a été produit dans la période,
soit une augmentation de 32,2% par rapport à Janvier-Avril 2013.

La production de bière a totalisé 5 352 300 litres soit une augmentation de 78%.

Un total de 16 422 700 litres de boissons non alcoolisées a été
fabriqué dans la période, soit une augmentation de 39,1% par rapport à
Janvier-Avril 2013.

vendredi 22 août 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

His Holiness Aram I Expresses His Condolences to Pope Francis upon the
Loss of His Family Members

Antelias – On Thursday 21 August 2014, His Holiness Aram I sent a
letter of condolence to Pope Francis expressing his profound sadness on
the death of three members of his family, following a car crash on a
provincial highway in Argentina.

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