Author: Tambiyan Samvel

Georgian defence minister welcomes Russian base agreement
Imedi TV, Tbilisi
31 Mar 06
[Presenter] The defence minister [Irakli Okruashvili] is making his
first comments on the signing of the agreement [today in Sochi] on
the time scale and procedures for the withdrawal of Russian bases
and other military assets from Georgian territory.
[Okruashvili, live broadcast begins mid sentence] – agreement between
Russia and Georgia on the withdrawal of Russian bases from Georgia.
This document was signed by representatives of Georgia’s Defence
Ministry and the Russian General Staff. This process which Russia
has been procrastinating over can now be considered more or less
complete. This is a process which will bring to an end the main stage
of Russia’s 200-year military presence in Georgia. By main stage I
mean that although under the agreement the majority of heavy equipment
from the Akhalkalaki military base will be withdrawn in 2006 and the
base will completely close in 2007 and most of the equipment from
the Batumi base will be removed in 2007 and the base will close
in 2008, there still remains the so-called Gudauta military base
[in Abkhazia]. We are working very actively to ensure that we do not
give the other side an opportunity to kind sand in our face and that
the base really is closed.
We welcome Russia’s constructive position which, after very intensive
work over the past two weeks, led to this document being signed.
Half-jokingly I would say that over the next three years during which
the Russian bases will be in withdrawal mode they will drink about
the same amount of wine as which Georgian companies should be able
to export to the Russian market [reference to a recent Russian ban
on imports of Georgian wine]. Thank you. Are there any questions?
[Question indistinct]
[Okruashvili] On our side you could say the only compromise was the
time scale of three years, as the withdrawal of these bases does not
need three years, but we made the decision and agreed to it.
[Question indistinct]
[Okruashvili] In Mtskheta they have living quarters for their
military officers and other insignificant assets. In addition,
you know that the Russian Group of Forces in Transcaucasia has its
headquarters in Tbilisi and they will retain that for three years to
manage this process and organize it. There will also be joint use
of the communications stations in Kojori which belonged to Russia
but now has effectively been transferred to us. We will also allow
them to use the Gonio training ground [in Ajaria] to facilitate the
withdrawal process but not for firing practice.
[Question indistinct]
[Okruashvili] Russia has military bases in Armenia and naturally they
need to be supplied. For certain reasons they cannot be supplied
through Turkey or Azerbaijan and naturally the only way to supply
them is through Georgia. This was also a compromise on our part to
a certain extent when we agreed to this kind of transit, but we will
not have a situation when some kind of freight going through Georgia
could pose a threat to the region. Thank you.

Russia to withdraw most of heavy hardware from Georgia to its own territory
NTV Mir, Moscow
31 Mar 06
[Presenter] Russia will withdraw its heavy hardware from Georgia
by the end of 2007. Moscow and Tbilisi signed an agreement in Sochi
today, according to which the Georgian side will take upon itself the
obligation to provide to Russia the use of its air space during this
period. It is also being planned to transport arms by rail.
The Russian military will have to withdraw all property from the
bases of Batumi and Akhalkalaki, subject to weather conditions,
no later than by 31 December 2007.
The document was signed by Georgian deputy defence minister [Mamuka
Kudava] and the commander-in-chief of the Russian Ground Troops
[Aleksey Maslov].
[Maslov 09:0922-09:0954] Most of the hardware and weapons will be
withdrawn to the territory of the Russian Federation. Part of the
hardware will be moved to the territory of Armenia to complete the
sets of hardware there – this is mostly to do with equipment and
vehicles. But I think that everything that was decided in the [1999]
Istanbul agreement, we have fulfilled to the letter.

LEVEL OF ARMENIAN-GREEK ECONOMIC COOPERATION IS FAR FROM BEING SATISFACTORY, ARMENIAN PRESIDENT SAYS
Noyan Tapan
Mar 30 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, NOYAN TAPAN. The current level of Armenian-Greek
economic cooperation is still far from being satisfactory and does not
reflect the potential existing between the two countries. The Armenian
President Robert Kocharian said this on March 30 when receiving the
Deputy Foreign Minister of Greece Evripidis Stylianidis. In this
connection Robert Kocharian underlined the importance of the role
of the Armenian-Greek intergovernmental commission on economic,
industrial, scientific and technical cooperation. E. Stylianidis,
who is in Armenia in order to participate in the fourth sitting as the
Greek co-chairman of the commission, expressed satisfaction over the
activities carried out by the intergovernmental commission during the
Yerevan sitting. He said that the commission strives to put in practice
the agreements reached during the RA President’s visit to Greece in
late 2005 and to outline new directions of cooperation. In his words,
the Greek side assesses the RA President’s visit as an excellent
one that gave a new quality to the bilateral relations. According to
the RA President’s press service, the interlocuters pointed out the
agriculture, tourism and energy sectors as priority directions of the
mutually beneficial cooperation. E. Stylianidis said that the Greek
side will try to encourage Greek businessmen to make investments and
set up joint ventures in Armenia.

REGULAR SITTING OF THE ARMENIAN-GREEK INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMMITTEE STARTED IN YEREVAN
ArmRadio.am
29.03.2006 13:36
The regular sitting of the Armenian-Greek Intergovernmental Committee
on economic, industrial, scientific and technical cooperation started
today in Yerevan.
>From the Greek side the Committee is headed by Deputy Foreign Minister
Evripides Stilianidis, the Armenian Co-Chair is the Minister of
Agriculture David Lockyan.
The participants of the sitting are discussing the current state of
economic cooperation and the prospects of development of Armenian-Greek
trade and economic relations, particularly the attraction of Greek
investments into Armenian economy. It is envisaged to discuss issues
of cooperation in the spheres of agriculture, tourism, finance and
banking, transport communication, as well as science and technology.
In the framework of the visit Evripides Stilianidis will meet RA
President Robert Kocharyan, the Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin
Second, Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan and Minister of Trade and
Economic Development Keren Chshmarityan.

VARTAN OSKANIAN HAS MEETINGS WITH CONDOLEEZZA RICE, DANIEL FRIED, MATTHEW BRYZA AND STEVEN MANN
Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Mar 29 2006
WASHINGTON, MARCH 29, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. RA Foreign
Minister Vartan Oskanian had a number of meetings with high-ranking
officials of the U.S.
Department of State during his two-days working visit to
Washington. After the ceremony of signing the Millennium Challenge
treaty, he met with U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Assistant Secretary for Europe
and Eurasia Daniel Fried and Deputy Assistant Secretary Matthew Bryza
on March 24. As Noyan Tapan was informed by the RA Foreign Ministry’s
Press and Information Department, issues of bilateral cooperation,
including programs of economic and democratic assistance, were
discussed during the meetings. The sides touched upon regional issues
as well, particularly the problems of energy safety and diversification
of fuels. The issue of settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict
and prospects of the negotiation process was also on the agenda, what
became the main theme of the conversation of the meeting taken place
on the same day between Vartan Oskanian and OSCE Minsk Group American
Co-Chairman Steven Mann. V.Oskanian again mentioned that Armenia is
ready to look for a solution through negotiations. V.Oskanian made
a speech on March 28 at the National Press Club of Washington as
well. Minister Oskanian left Washington for New York on March 29 where
meetings with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other high-ranking
officials are scheduled for the next days.

RUSSIA CAN RECONSIDER POSITIONS ON UNRECOGNIZED REPUBLICS’ STATUS
PanARMENIAN.Net
27.03.2006 21:54 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Russia can reconsider its positions on the status
of unrecognized republics in the post soviet space, Polity Foundation
President, Deputy Chairman of the Editorial Board of Russia in Global
Affairs Vyacheslav Nikonov stated. In his words, Russia adheres to
the principle of territorial integrity of Georgia and Moldova. “At
the same time Russia builds its policy on two principles, these being
the protection of rights of national minorities and the protection
of Russian citizens living in these republics,” he emphasized.
“Russia adheres to the principle of territorial integrity but if the
threat to the national minorities increases Moscow can review its
positions, especially if the status of the unrecognized republics will
be raised in view of reconsideration of Kosovo’s status,” Vyacheslav
Nikonov said, reported RIA Novosti.

ACP PLEDGES TO INVEST $295 MILLION IN COPPER MINES
Armenpress
Mar 27 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 27, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian Copper Program (ACP),
a company running copper and molybdenum mines in Armenia’s northern
region of Alaverdi, has pledged to invest $295 million in the next 28
years in new mines in Teghut, which experts estimate have the second
biggest deposits of copper and molybdenum.
A joint Canadian-Armenian study has revealed that the Teghut mines
have around 450 million tons of ore.
This is a three-stage program. The first stage is to last 7 years and
see $125 million of investments, in the second five-year-long stage
the company will invest $85 million and another $85 million will be
invested in the last 14-year-long stage. In 28 years the company is
supposed to extract and process 21 million tons of ore annually.
Every stage of the investment program is expected to surge copper
production 3-4 times. The production surge is supposed to result in
turn in GDP rise from 2.7 percent in the first phase up to 5.5 percent
in the last one. The company has also pledged to plant 127,000 trees
in nearby 600 hectares of land in the next 25 years.
Armenia’s metallurgical enterprises reported last year a 33 percent
rise in aggregate output to about 130 billion drams ($290 million),
attributed by trade and economic development ministry experts to
strong global demand in non-ferrous metals and the privatization of
the country’s largest mining plant- the Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum
Combine at $132 million in December 2004 by a consortium of local
and foreign investors led by German’s Cronimet metals group. Cronimet
has pledged to invest an additional $157 million by 2008.

PanARMENIAN.Net
6 Armenians Elected to Kislovodsk Town Parliament
24.03.2006 22:45 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ March 22 Armenian Consul General in
the South Federation Okrug of Russia Ararat Gomtsian
took part in the solemn ceremony of assumption of the
office by Mayor of Kislovodsk Biryukov, reported
Yerkramas, the newspaper of Armenians of Russia.
Congratulating the newly election mayor on the
election Ararat Gomtsian wished the town prosperity
and good relations with Armenia, specifically with its
twin city Vanadzor. The Consul General also
congratulated newly elected deputies of the town
parliament including 6 Armenians, residents of Kislovodsk.

What lies beneath

Bangkok Post – Thailand; Mar 24, 2006
KONG RITHDEE
Where the Truth Lies, Starring Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison
Lohman, Rachel Blanchard, Directed by Atom Egoyan : With a little help
from live lobsters, potbellied mobsters, and a 39-hour save-polio-kids
live telethon that succeeds in canonising a pair of showbiz sleazebags
as Angels of America, Lanny Morris and Vince Collins, a song-and-dance
nightclub duo from the 1950s, worm their way out of a murder scandal
when the corpse of a blonde waitress shows up in their hotel suite’s
bathtub. There’s a session of amphetamine-fuelled menage a trois,
complete with confusion over limbs and orifices, and a shot of
fantasised lesbian sex between Alice (as in Wonderland) and a
zonked-out Nancy Drew-wannabe in a slinky dress.
Sure it sounds like something that makes males sweat. But Where the
Truth Lies, Atom Egoyan’s schematic reconstruction of noirish
semi-potboilers, ends up like a pedantic exercise in complex
screenwriting that involves us in the process yet yields little
payoff. In classic Egoyan works, like Exotica, Felicia’s Journey and
above all The Sweet Hereafter (check them out on DVD), the
writer/director’s celebrated technique of jigsaw narrative – where the
story loops back and forth in time with sublime fluency, where the
characters’ fragmented memories supply the rich vein of narrative –
yields not simply a complete picture of what “really happened” after
the collages are put together, but also a profound feeling of
heartache and loss that strike his protagonists as inevitable.
Egoyan, a Canadian auteur of Armenian descent, remains as agile as
ever in his manipulation of past and present in this detective/drama
period montage.
But what I see is craft; and what’s lacking is the empathy we usually
feel for the characters suffering from the vestige of long-ago
tragedies, which makes Egoyan’s early films shrill and resonant.
Here the story relies on shifting points of view in recounting a
Rashomon-style murder mystery. In the late 1950s, Lanny Morris and
Vince Collins (Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, in sinewy performances)
are a restless comic duo booked by nightclubs on either coast, usually
ones managed by the mob. Lanny (Bacon channelling a licentious lustre)
croons numbers and seduces pretty audiences as his buddy Vince pops
pills and beats up smart-ass male spectators in the toilet. Not
surprisingly, Lanny and Vince backstage are the id of their on-stage
superego, two cynical duds who suffer the showbiz burden of having to
be nice to the public when they know in the privacy of their own
hearts that they’re not nice guys.
That would remain tolerable enough had the wide-eyed corpse of
Maureen, a waitress who delivered room service to the duo three nights
before, not been found floating in their bathtub just after their
historic live telethon. The film fast forwards to the early ’70s,
where we meet Karen O’Connor (Alison Lohman), a journalist who’s
investigating the duo’s break-up following the scandal.
Karen approaches Vince for an interview – her publishing house agrees
to pay him a hefty sum – then in an incredible coincidence, she bumps
into Lanny on her first-class flight, where he wastes not a second in
seducing her with his smoothie’s spell. Karen lies to him about her
real job and identity, and the encounter fires her up to unearth the
truth about the murder 15 years ago.
What I’ve described is a simplification; Egoyan’s plot is pocketed
with little nooks and crannies that weave into a complicated web of
deceit, as flashbacks and recollections gradually peel off the cover.
They provide clues to solve the whodunit mystery, but I don’t think
they really add up to the meanings of the characters’ motives. The
recurring theme of the film is how everybody has double faces: one to
be worn in order to get what he/she wants, the other, naturally
uglier, is kept hidden under the lid until no more lies can cover the
truth. In this dynamism of duplicity – the gist of film noir tradition
– the roles of victims and perpetrators are constantly shifted as
truth and lies mingle freely. Lanny, Vince, Karen, and even Maureen –
when they take off their clothes in the film’s notorious NC-17 sex
scenes – are they also shedding their skins to reveal to us who they
really are?
Perhaps not. Stilted as the direction is, the film sometimes groans
under the heavy mechanism of its own plot. Where the Truth Lies is
based on a novel by Rupert Holmes, who used real-life celebrities,
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, as his protagonists (Lanny and Vince are
fictitious substitutes). The advantage of using real celebrities in
the narrative, I believe, is in showing the impact of social milieu of
post-war America, as the cult of celebrities gives way to moral
corruption. Lanny and Vince couldn’t have done what they did had they
not been exalted by the media in general and television in particular
to star status. They – as well as their groupies, Karen and Maureen
included – are the products of their own heady decades, though the
film could’ve pressed harder in this regard and recast its characters
at the centre of a cultural shift that’s taking place around them.
Sure we’ll find out the truth about what really happens to Maureen
that night in the hotel, all details of the incident neatly laid out
and wrapped in a nice package. That’s when the truth stops lying, and
unfortunately that’s also when the film stops being interesting.

Armenpress
OSKANIAN TO VISIT USA, RUSSIA AND SYRIA

YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS: Armenian foreign
ministry said minister Vartan Oskanian will pay a
working visit to the USA on March 26-31.
The ministry said on March 27 Oskanian and US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will attend the
signing OF the $235 million Millennium Challenge
Compact, recently awarded by the U.S. government to
Armenia. On the same day Oskanian is expected to meet
with Steven Mann, the US cochairman in the OSCE Minsk
group. On March 27, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Vartan
Oskanian will address Armenian-American activists
gathering in Washington.
On March 29 he will leave Washington for New York
where on March 30 he will meet with UNDP coordinator
Kemal Dervis and the UN General Assembly chairman Jan
Eliason. Oskanian is also scheduled to meet with Kofee
Anan. On April 6-7 Oskanian will be in Moscow to meet
his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and Russian
security council secretary Igor Ivanov.
On April 7-9 Oskanian will be in Syria where he
will meet with Syrian president Bashar Asad and
foreign minister Valid Mualim. On April 9 Oskanian
will attend a ceremony in Syrian Aleppo dedicated to
the centenary of the Armenian General Benevolent Union
and the 75-th anniversary of foundation of the
Armenian Youth Union.