Author: Kanayan Tamar

NUMBER OF TOURISTS TO ARMENIA GROWS BY 11.6% IN FIRST HALF OF 2006
Noyan Tapan
Aug 15 2006
YEREVAN, AUGUST 15, NOYAN TAPAN. 122,528 tourists came to Armenia
in the first half of 2006 against 109,750 ones in the same months of
last year (a 11.6% increase). According to the RA National Statistical
Service, in the first half of this year, 119,451 people left Armenia to
travel abroad, which exceeds the index of January-June 2005 by 13.3%.

RUSSIAN-ARMENIAN TRADE TURNOVER GROWING – PUTIN, KOCHARIAN
Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS Business and Financial Newswire
August 15, 2006 Tuesday 7:19 PM MSK
The Russian and Armenian presidents agreed that trade between the two
countries is growing and expressed their hope for good prospects in
bilateral relations.
“Trade turnover is growing, and I am sure there are good prospects
for this grow and a desire of the business community to develop
relations of partnership,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said
at a meeting with Armenian President Robert Kocharian in the run-up
to the opening of an informal Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC)
summit in Sochi on Tuesday.
The Armenian president also pointed to growth in mutual trade turnover,
but emphasized that “it would be difficult to achieve good quality
without resolving the problems of communication and transportation.”
Kocharian proposed that the two countries focus on the “investment
component” and mentioned a project in which the Russian aluminum giant
Rusal was involved and which had been announced in Sochi two years ago.
The presidents also expressed their willingness to discuss difficult
problems facing Armenia.
“As for the well-known complex problems in the region, I believe we
will have time to talk about them as well,” Putin said.

HAIGAZIAN STUDENTS HELP REFUGEES
Haigazian University, Lebanon
Aug. 5, 2006
>From the very first day of the July 2006 war, Student Life officers
started contemplating ways to have their share in ameliorating the
hardships the country faced.
Obviously student brotherly help could not proceed unless the security
situation allowed. Plans were put down, several brainstorming sessions
were held, all concluded with the determination of extending a
helping hand.
Preliminary work began; students were contacted to check about the
whereabouts and conditions of HU students of the bombed areas. Others
were asked about their availability for the university-sponsored
philanthropic work. A long list of volunteer students was prepared.
HU students from the university neighborhood checked in and offered
their assistance and help too.
Soon refugees started to pour into the Armenian Evangelical School,
next to the university. Student volunteers were called to an emergency
meeting. Plans were drawn, and social outreach assistance was put into
action in the form of entertaining the forty refugee kids of those 30
families who had taken refuge in the neighboring school, and extend
help to their parents and elderly in trying to relieve their hardship
and establish a minimum living conditions in collaboration with the
Armenian Evangelical Outreach Project coordinator, Maria Bakalian.
Now one can come across the students playing football or basketball
or table tennis with the kids. Others are coloring figures or drawing
pictures with watercolor paint.
By the end of the day the students gather at the Student Lounge,
brief on their daily activity, assess it and plan for the next day.
Apart from this university-sponsored project, large numbers of
Haigazian University students have volunteered in social outreach
centers at their residential areas.

GERMAN REFUGEE EXHIBIT BREACHES EUROPEAN TABOO
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Monsters and Critics.com, UK
Aug. 10, 2006
Berlin – A new exhibit by ethnic Germans expelled from eastern Europe
after World War II carefully avoids giving greater prominence to
German refugee experiences than to the suffering of other groups
driven from their homes by the Nazis earlier in the war.
The federation of expellees, the BdV, was warned in advance that
portraying Germans as victims would breach one of history’s most
sensitive taboos. So the controversial show seeks to put the fates
of the ejected Germans into the context of a wider European drama
of expulsions.
The professionally curated show looks at European history from
a standpoint of the expulsions, refugee treks and genocide that
devastated Armenians, Jews, Bosnian Muslims and other societies.
Housed in 600 square metres of the Kronprinzenpalais museum on Berlin’s
Unter den Linden avenue, it picks a range of examples from the Armenian
genocide of 1915-17 to the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of former Yugoslavia.
A link is drawn to the persecution that caused huge numbers of
European Jews to flee after the 1933 Nazi takeover in Germany. The
exhibit quotes Israeli historian, Moshe Zimmermann, who calls this
dispossession a ‘building block of the Holocaust.’
BdV president Erika Steinbach says the show does not portray the
Holocaust as such, because that is incomparably separate.
In any case, not even expulsions can be fairly compared to one another,
says exhibition curator Wilfried Rogasch. Each was uniquely wrong,
distinct from the one that preceded it.
Entitled ‘Forced Routes, Expulsions in the 20th Century,’ the
exhibition seeks to place a personal touch on history, telling of
the lifelong psychological traumas of those who lost their homes.
Emotion, it suggests, is an unavoidable part of the story.
Items on display include the ship’s bell of the Wilhelm Gustloff,
a passenger ship sunk in 1945 by the Soviet military, causing 9,000
fleeing German refugees on board to drown in the Baltic Sea.
Ultimately, 14 million Germans forced out of the region by about 1950,
often by decrees that gave them the choice to leave or starve.
A toy car once clutched by a Greek boy as he was expelled from northern
Cyprus witnesses to a child’s sense of loss.
The curators say they wanted to avoid placing each refugee’s suffering
in a scales to compare, and simply to suggest that each misdeed was
an assault on humanity collectively. Eminent German scholars and
writers were consulted during the show’s making.
In eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic,
there is deep disquiet over the exhibition, starting with the fact
that it is being put on in Berlin, once Adolf Hitler’s capital,
rather than in the refugees’ former home, eastern Europe.
The BdV set up a foundation headed by Steinbach to create
the exhibition, with the ultimate aim of integrating it into a
documentation centre as a permanent memorial to expulsions. She has
stubbornly defended the plan despite angry protests in Poland.
The exhibition runs to October 29.
On the other side of the street, the federally funded Germany
History Museum is showing another exhibition touching on the refugee
experience: how the millions of uprooted and hungry people were
integrated into West German society after the war.

AIDS KILLED 91 In Armenia
ArmRadio.am
11.08.2006 16:10
91 lethal incomes of AIDS have been recorded in Armenia over 18 years
since the first case of the disease in Armenia, Arminfo reported.
According to the Republican HIV/AIDS Prevention Center, among the
victims were 18 women and 3 children. The first lethal income of AIDS
in Armenia was registered in 2001. The number of AIDS-infected has
sharply risen also this year. Since the beginning of the epidemic in
1988, 141 cases of AIDS were recorded.
Since the registration of the first HIV-AIDS infected patient, the
number of HIV-infected patients reached 420 people (96 women and 8
children). This year 51 new cases of HIV were fixed. Majority of women
(92.7%) were neither prostitutes nor drug addicts. They were infected
by their own husbands, who in their turn, got the infection in CIS,
particularly in Russia and Ukraine. 53.2% of the infected men are drug
addicts. The specialists of the Center say the official statistics
cannot display the real situation with HIV-AIDS in the country as
the real figures ten times exceed the official statistics.
According to the assessment of the Center’s personnel, there are over
3,000 HIV-infected people in Armenia.

MOST ARMENIANS ‘NOT DEPENDENT ON REMITTANCES’
By Shakeh Avoyan
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Aug. 10, 2006
The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) cited on Wednesday the findings of
new research to substantiate its assertion that most Armenians do not
live off external cash remittances and are therefore not suffering
from the dollar’s continuing dramatic depreciation.
Karine Karapetian, head of the bank’s statistics department, said a
household survey commissioned by the CBA has found that only 37 percent
of Armenian families regularly receive and rely on hard currency sent
by their members working abroad. She said most of those families are
part of the middle case, contrary to the widely held belief that the
beneficiaries of remittances are mainly low-income people.
However, this claim seems to be in conflict with the survey’s finding
that the incoming financial assistance is enough to meet only the
basic consumption needs of 76 percent of its recipients. Only one
percent of them can afford to save some of that cash.
CBA Chairman Tigran Sarkisian and other officials have consistently
insisted that poor households have been largely unaffected by a more
than 40 percent plunge in the dollar’s value against the Armenian
dram that has been registered since January 2004. They say a strong
dram has meant low inflation, which is far more important for the poor.
Government critics claim, however, that the Armenian authorities have
been “artificially” bolstering the dram to siphon off a large part
of the hard currency flowing into Armenia and benefit a small circle
of government-connected importers. The CBA has repeatedly dismissed
the claims, blaming the dram’s appreciation on recent years’ sizable
increase in the volume of the remittances.
According to Karapetian, they totaled at least $940 million last
year and are projected to rise by 17 percent this year. The dram has
already gained 13 percent in value against the dollar since January,
reaching a new high this week.

RUSSIA DOESN’T NEED TO BE LOVED BY ITS NEIGHBORS
Translated by Elena Leonova
Source: Novaya Gazeta, No. 59, August 7-9, 2006, p. 7
Agency WPS
What the Papers Say Part A (Russia)
August 8, 2006 Tuesday
Kremlin Official Talks About Relations With Neighboring Countries
An interview with presidential administration official Modest Kolerov;
The Kremlin official in charge of relations with CIS countries and
other former Soviet states is Modest Kolerov – head of the presidential
administration’s directorate for inter-regional and cultural contacts
with foreign countries.
The Kremlin official in charge of relations with CIS countries and
other former Soviet states is Modest Alekseevich Kolerov – head of
the presidential administration’s directorate for inter-regional and
cultural contacts with foreign countries. He isn’t averse to some
theatricality. During this interview, we saw a kaleidescope of masks:
from the self-confident etatist and chilly Russian patriot to an
accuser boiling with righteous rage.
Question: In the wake of the recent CIS heads of state summit in
Moscow, there’s an impression that these summits are becoming more
and more of a purely social event, like the races at Ascot. Who needs
the CIS in this form?
Modest Kolerov: Many technical parameters for cooperation in
industry, communications, rail transport, or aviation are confirmed or
established within the CIS framework. Anyone who risks pulling out of
that also risks being left by the wayside. For good reason, the rail
transport councils established with the center in Russia are drawing
interest not only from CIS countries, but also the Baltic states,
Finland, Austria – everyone in the European space. The CIS is not an
organization from which any country can withdraw at no cost to itself.
Question: But some heads of state have been declining to attend
CIS summits.
Modest Kolerov: Not turning up doesn’t mean declining to attend –
it means demonstrating something. We need the CIS in order to retain
a field for realizing our national interests more conveniently. Our
interests include the fact that up to 15 million illegal migrants
who are present on Russian territory each year come from adjacent
countries. After all, we see how refugees are being evacuated from
Lebanon based on two principles: Russian citizens and citizens of
CIS countries. This may seem irrelevant to you, but it’s probably
the most important factor for individuals. This is the burden of
responsibility we bear. The flow of transit migrants and Russia’s
technically central nature in the former Soviet Union are the factors
determining our contacts with the CIS.
Question: The “elder brother” concept?
Modest Kolerov: No. I don’t know what it’s called, but in my own field,
the area of practical horizontal contacts… You just try telling the
Armenians, Azeris, or Ukrainians that the CIS is nonsense. They’ll
tell you: what about being allowed to stay in Russia for 90 days
without registration? What about visa-free travel?
What about the ability to get a work permit, despite strict immigration
rules – is that nonsense? An elder brother claims a leadership role. Do
you have any evidence of Russia claiming such a role?
Question: What about the elections of 2004?
Modest Kolerov: Oh, really? Why are you ignoring the participation
of thousands of Western consultants in some of our neighbor-states,
while making a big thing of the participation of five or six Russian
consultants, most of whom were working for the Orange opposition? Who
is the elder brother of whom?
Question: One political analyst has said that after the 2004 election,
President Putin set Gleb Pavlovsky the task of reintegrating the
post-Soviet space. Did that happen?
Modest Kolerov: I don’t know anything about that. I don’t think
it’s true.
Question: All the same, Russia’s active interference in Ukraine’s
presidential election shows that there must have been some sort of
social demand.
Modest Kolerov: I wasn’t working here [the presidential administration
at the time. I have my own point of view on these things: we weren’t
interfering, we were being drawn in.
Question: Are we so small that we can be drawn into the political
games of other countries?
Modest Kolerov: We’re very large! You don’t understand! Look at the
revolutionary impact of Russia’s decision to start basing relations
with its neighbors on free-market principles: “How can this happen?
We’re used to getting something for nothing!” Analyze the internal
psychology of that reaction! It’s an insulting reaction!
Question: How does “being drawn in” prove that we are large?
Modest Kolerov: We’re large, but we haven’t been very good at
calculating profitability. So now that we’ve started doing the
calculations, this has led to suffering of the peoples – or rather,
those who are accustomed to making money from suffering.
Question: And how were we “drawn in”?
Modest Kolerov: By appeals to our sense of responsibility for the
former Soviet Union!
Question: So there was some social demand for integration?
Modest Kolerov: In contrast to Russia, the elites in many other
post-Soviet states haven’t changed – they remain national-communist.
It’s genetic. Analyze it! The ability of some red directors to split
up other red directors using integration rhetoric is still accepted
in those countries as an effective method. It’s been a long time
since that worked in Russia!
Question: Could you sum up the main direction of Russia’s policy on
other CIS countries?
Modest Kolerov: To know as much as possible about them, to communicate
with all forces (lawful political forces), and to maintain dialogue
that can ensure the realization of our interests.
Question: So why do our media portray Russia as being surrounded
by enemies?
Modest Kolerov: No, they don’t. Germany is our strategic ally, and
then there’s France, Italy, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan – a lovely country,
and Belarus…
Question: But why are Russians suddenly taking a negative view
of Georgia? According to a February poll done by the All-Russian
Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), there was a 12% increase
between 2003 and 2006 in the proportion of respondents who describe
Russian-Georgian relations as hostile. What do these 18% of Russian
citizens see in Georgia?
Modest Kolerov: What Russian citizens see in Georgia are the actions
of the Georgian autorities: at the highest level – I repeat, at
the highest official level – they compare Russians to conquerors
exterminating the Georgian people. They permit themselves to direct
personal insults at our country’s senior leaders, and repeat this
periodically. They set themselves the task of teaching us about
democracy, and they have been insulting Russia and the Russian people
incessantly for the past two years. According to Georgian Defense
Minister Okruashvili, Russians “drink fecal matter” (the Georgian
president has instructed Okruashvili to resolve the wine crisis). The
causes should be sought in Georgia, not Russia.
Question: But is it proper for a great power to take notice of the
words used by a few individual members of another country’s ruling
elite? Aren’t Foreign Ministry notes sufficient?
Modest Kolerov: I repeat: we’re talking about senior state officials.
Their statements are devolving. Not only in Georgia, but also in
Ukraine. If they really want to make themselves second-rank, let them
say so openly – and we’ll treat them differently. But until then,
as long as they’re sovereign states, their words will be given the
same weight as the words of our country.
Question: We’ve banned wine imports from Georgia, and now the Georgians
are blocking our path into the World Trade Organization. Is this a
fair price for the conflict?
Modest Kolerov: This isn’t my field, but our accession to the WTO
was already being questioned, even without that.
Question: In 2003, you headed the project aimed at stopping oil
deliveries via the pipeline to the Ventspils Port in Latvia. Those
lobbying efforts were crowned with success – but then the European
Union gave that city a development program, and now the residents of
Ventspils are glad that they’re no longer hooked on oil. Isn’t Russia
abusing its leverage?
Modest Kolerov: Russia is not abusing its leverage. Russia is
protecting its national interests. If special transit relations
provide money that pays for the rise of economic and political forces
that subsidize Russophobes, Russia is bound to question the need
for these relations. I should add that the person who managed that
transit route in Latvia is now facing criminal charges – initiated
by the Latvian authorities with support from American investigators.
Question: You have said that there is no pro-Russian position in the
CIS countries. So who are you working with?
Modest Kolerov: With national elites who are protecting their national
interests. If you think we should only work with those who kiss and
embrace us, you’re wrong.
Question: What about the pro-American position?
Modest Kolerov: It’s brief. I’ve forgotten the person’s name, but
one of the US assistant secretaries of state said recently that
the Americans see Georgia as a field for experiments. If I were the
Georgian Foreign Ministry, I would have protested at that. But they
kept silent.

APPLICANTS FAIL TO EXCEL IN HISTORY OF ARMENIA
Panorama.am
14:12 08/08/06
Ruben Topchyan, head of calculation center at the Republican Acceptance
Committee (RAC), said 8 percent absenteeism is observed among the
applicants who registered for the examinations. He said this is a
normal indicator and is even lower than last year.
Topchyan summed up the results of the first 20 days of examinations
at the higher educational establishment together with Sasun Melikyan,
RAC responsible secretary. They said there is a tendency to apply
more to social sciences instead of exact sciences. Besides, students
apply to those departments where the tuition fee is low.
No student has got 19 or 20 from the History of Armenia as of
today. Higher scores are observed from the Armenian language and
English language. No student has also received 20 from Chemistry,
General History, French (oral), Italian (oral and written), Geography,
Russian (oral).
Several cases of plagiarism were reported. Under such cases, the
examination is stopped and the applicant receives the lowest possible
score – 0. /Panorama.am/

Sortie en France d’une biographie autorisee de Charles Aznavour
Le Devoir
jeudi 3 août 2006
AP
Mots cles : France (pays), charles aznavour, biographie
Paris — Elu en 1998 “artiste de varietes du siècle” devant Elvis
Presley et Bob Dylan par un sondage du magazine americain Time,
Charles Aznavour est aujourd’hui, pour le monde entier, une veritable
legende.
Il lui manquait pourtant, a côte de son livre de souvenirs personnels
(Le Temps des avants, 2003), une vraie biographie de reference qui
raconte l’histoire de son destin exceptionnel, d’abord hostile et
litteralement “apprivoise” a force de courage, de tenacite, et bien
sûr, de talent.
C’est chose faite maintenant avec un ouvrage de Daniel Pantchenko,
avec Marc Robine, dans lequel le chanteur — qui a accepte de
participer sans reserve — seduit d’abord par le regard d’historien
porte sur ses racines, depuis le genocide armenien de 1915 et la
diaspora qui s’ensuivit, puis par l’analyse sensible de ses chansons.
Pour la première fois de sa longue et impressionnante carrière (ne le
22 mai 1924 a Paris, il debute a neuf ans au theâtre, a 12 ans au
cinema, avant de se lancer finalement dans la chanson en solo en
1950), Charles Aznavour temoigne, delivrant des souvenirs inedits et
multipliant commentaires, precisions ou reflexions sur une vie riche
notamment en rencontres de toutes sortes, ajoutant ainsi a cet
ouvrage une formidable dimension humaine.
Grand specialiste de la chanson francaise (il a tenu la rubrique au
quotidien L’Humanite), l’auteur a repris et mene a terme un manuscrit
qu’avait commence a ecrire son collègue et ami Marc Robine, disparu
en août 2003. Une “bio” passionnante et en tous points reussie. (Ed.
Fayard/Chorus, 609 pages, plus un cahier photos de 16 pages.)
–Boundary_(ID_TN9evJODvCN1eAI6z+jaQg)–

Russian command requests Georgian visas for over 1,000 servicemen
Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS Military Newswire
August 4, 2006 Friday 4:48 PM MSK
TBILISI Aug 4 — The command of the Russian military force in
Transcaucasia has sent a list of over 1,000 servicemen who are
applying for entry visas to do their military service in Georgia to
the Georgian authorities.
“We are asking for visas for exactly as many people as have left
Georgia and hope for a positive reply,” a spokesman for the command
told Interfax-Military News Agency on Friday.
“This is essential for the continuation of the base withdrawal
process,” he said.
“Six trains of arms have left the 12th base in Batumi this year.
The armaments were taken to the 102nd Russian base in Gyumri, Armenia.
Twelve trains have left the 62nd base in Akhalkalaki. From there the
arms and vehicles are being withdrawn to Russia. Six more trains will
leave Akhalkalaki this year,” he said.
“This year our emphasis is on heavy vehicles, next year we will focus
on property and equipment that remains in large quantities,” he said.
The Russian military bases in Georgia are due to close down during
2008.