Author: Taslakhchian Andranik

ARMENIAN COMMERCIAL BANKS PURCHASE $60.8 MILLION AND SELL $66.5 MILLION IN ONE WEEK

ARKA
DECEMBER 4, 2009
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, December 4, /ARKA/. Armenian commercial banks purchased
$60.8 million at intra-bank forex market on November 30-December 4
at the average weighted exchange rate of 385.09 Drams per one USD,
the Central Bank of Armenia said. It said $66.5 million were sold in
the same week at 386.13 Drams per one USD.

In inter-bank forex market a total of $400,000 worth deals were
concluded at the average weighted exchange rate of 385 Drams per $1.

The overall amount of deals concluded at NASDAQ OMX Armenia stock
exchange totaled $16.1 million at 385.33 Drams per $1. In November
23-29 time span Armenian banks extended 14.6 billion Dram and $27.1
illion credits. ($1- 385.21 Drams).

SEN. MENENDEZ INTRODUCES RESOLUTION CONCERNING UNITED STATES RECORD AFFIRMATION ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION

US Fed News
December 1, 2009 Tuesday 10:11 AM EST

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 — Sen. Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, has
introduced a resolution (S. Res. 316) "calling upon the President
to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects
appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related
to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the
United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide."

The resolution introduced on Oct. 21, was co-sponsored by Sen. John
Ensign, R-Nevada. It was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.

A copy of the full-text of the legislation follows:

S. Res. 316

Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the
United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.

Resolved,

SHORT TITLE

Sec. 1. This resolution may be cited as the ‘Affirmation of the United
States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution’.

FINDINGS

Sec. 2. The Senate finds the following:

(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman
Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly
2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were
killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and the
elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their
historic homeland.

(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers of England, France, and Russia,
jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time
ever another government of committing ‘a crime against humanity’.

(3) This joint statement stated that ‘the Allied Governments
announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally
responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government,
as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres’.

(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders
involved in the ‘organization and execution’ of the Armenian Genocide
and in the ‘massacre and destruction of the Armenians’.

(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime
were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing
massacres against the Armenian people.

(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War
Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal
were all condemned to death for their crimes, but, the verdicts of
the courts were not enforced.

(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are
documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of
Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States,
the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence
attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.

(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration
holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide,
especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States
Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and
widely available to the public and interested institutions.

(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to
the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by
officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman
Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.

(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the Department
of State the policy of the Government of the Ottoman Empire as ‘a
campaign of race extermination,’ and was instructed on July 16, 1915,
by Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the ‘Department approves
your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution’.

(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12, 64th Congress, agreed to
February 9, 1916, resolved that ‘the President of the United States
be respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of
this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing
funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians,’ who at the
time were enduring ‘starvation, disease, and untold suffering’.

(12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the
formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered
by the Act of August 6, 1919, 66th Congress (41 Stat. 273, chapter
32), which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid
Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became
foster children of the American people.

(13) Senate Resolution 359, 66th Congress, agreed to May 11, 1920,
stated in part that ‘the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted
by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and
other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered’.

(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate
of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James
Harbord, that stated ‘[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have
left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys,
and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of
this most colossal crime of all the ages’.

(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland
without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying ‘[w]ho,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ and
thus set the stage for the Holocaust.

(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1944, and who
was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as
a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.

(17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations
at Mr. Lemkin’s urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 96(1), and the United Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide recognized the Armenian Genocide
as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent and punish
by codifying existing standards.

(18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the
Armenian Genocide, ‘precisely . . . one of the types of acts which
the modern term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover,’
as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.

(19) The Commission stated that ‘[t]he provisions of Article 230
of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in
conformity with the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been
committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship,
though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a
precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters,
and offers an example of one of the categories of ‘crimes against
humanity’ as understood by these enactments’.

(20) House Joint Resolution 148, 94th Congress, adopted on April
8, 1975, resolved, ‘That April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as
‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the
President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a
proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe
such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide,
especially those of Armenian ancestry . . .’.

(21) President Ronald Reagan, in proclamation number 4838, dated April
22, 1981 (95 Stat. 1813), stated that, in part ‘[l]ike the genocide
of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which
followed it–and like too many other persecutions of too many other
people–the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten’.

(22) House Joint Resolution 247, 98th Congress, adopted on September
10, 1984, resolved, ‘That April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as
‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the
President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a
proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe
such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide,
especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry .

. .’.

(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United
Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection
of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled ‘Study of the
Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,’
which stated that ‘[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been
the only case of genocide in the 20th century.

Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the
Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916’.

(24) This report also explained that ‘[a]t least 1,000,000, and
possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably
estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent
authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports
in United States, German and British archives and of contemporary
diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany’.

(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent
Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian
Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.

(26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the
Department of State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Genocide
may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the
policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on
ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide
‘contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually
retracted’.

(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an
amendment to House Bill 3540, 104th Congress (the Foreign Operations,
Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997),
to reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of
lobbying fees in the United States) until the Government of Turkey
acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory
of its victims.

(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated:
‘This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian-Americans throughout
the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history
of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a
half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.’.

(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: ‘On this
day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of
the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians
through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.’.

(30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the
Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international
authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is
a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the
future, and that just resolution of this issue will help prevent
future genocides.

DECLARATION OF POLICY

Sec. 3. The Senate–

(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of
the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity
concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and
genocide documented in the United States record relating to the
Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a
just resolution; and

(2) calls upon the President in the President’s annual message
commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to
accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation
of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history
of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.

AMERICAN POSITION HAS BEEN THAT ISSUE OF TURKISH-ARMENIAN RELATIONS AND NAGORNO-KARABAKH PROBLEM ARE PARALLEL: HUDSON UNIVERSITY SENIOR FELLOW
T. Teymur

Today
913.html
Dec 3 2009
Azerbaijan

Senior fellow at Hudson University, expert on post-soviet countries
David Satter expressed his opinion about the upcoming meeting between
U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan.

The expert said the Nagorno-Karabakh problem will probably be
discussed.

"The issue of Nagorno-Karabach is almost certain to be discussed
but there does not seem to be much likelihood that the U.S. will be
pressuring Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. The American position has
been that the issues of Turkish-Armenian relations and Nagorno-Karabakh
are separate but parallel. Having achieved a tentative agreement on
Turkish-Armenian normalization, the U.S. is unlikely to want to risk
it by linking the two issues" – said Satter.

"This reflects the fact that the agreement on normalization was
achieved in part to relieve the U.S. of the need to take a position
on the "Armenian genocide" question. In other words, the U.S. may not
feel it is in a position to pressure Armenia further" – Satter said.

AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTERS MEET WITH OSCE MINSK GROUP CO-CHAIRS

APA
Dec 1 2009
Azerbaijan

Baku. Viktoriya Dementieva – APA. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar
Mammadyarov met with OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Yuri Merzlyakov,
Bernard Fassier and Robert Bradtke within the framework of the Athens
meeting of OSCE Ministerial Council.

APA’s special correspondent reports from Athens that the co-chairs
also met with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian. Personal
Representative of OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk attended
both meetings.

Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers also attended a working
dinner in the Intercontinental Hotel in Athens. Armenian Foreign
Ministry’s press service reports that the sides discussed the
opportunities of issuing a statement on Nagorno Karabakh conflict
within the framework of the 17th session of OSCE Ministerial Council.

HOVHANNES TUMANYAN’S SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY – WRITTEN BUT NOT PUBLISHED

PanARMENIAN.Net
30.11.2009 17:06 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Associate Doctor of Philology Susanna Hovhannisyan
is the author of Hovhannes Tumanyan’s scientific biography, tremendous
work depicting the great poet’s life in a new light.

"This is something absolutely new in terms of introducing Tumanyan’s
biography. Strange though it is, there are so far no available records
describing the great poet’s life after 1900," Susanna Hovhannisyan
told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter. According to her, the book reflects
the key moments of the Tumanyan’s life from 1900 to 1912.

The book was written in May but has not been published due to the lack
of financial means. "The absence of Pushkin’s scientific biography
was estimated as a cultural loss in Moscow, whereas our government
does not even think about assisting in the publication of Hovhannes
Tumanyan’s scientific biography," the author said.

Great Armenian poet and public figure Hovhannes T. Tumanyan was born on
February 19, 1869 in Dsegh, Lori region (north Armenia), to a family
of parish priest. In 1878-83, he studied in Djalalogli (Stepanavan)
local school and then continued his education Nersisyan college
(Tbilisi). However, after 3 years of studies, financial hardships
caused the future writer to drop out of school. Tumanyan started
writing in the early 1880s, but gained the recognition of poet after
the publication of his first collection of poems. Hovhannes Tumanyan
died in 1923.

OPEN LETTER TO PETER SEMNEBY

Lragir.am
Monday, 30 November, 2009

Open letter to Peter Semneby, EU Special Representative to the South
Caucasus countries, from the "Yerkir" Union of NGOs for Repatriation
and Settlement

Dear Mr. Semneby,

In the interview published in the Russian daily newspaper "Vremya
Novostey" on November 2, 2009 you, among other issues, touched upon
the problems of ethnic minorities of Georgia and, in that context, the
problems of the Javakheti Armenians, making the following observation:
‘The issues of national minorities in Georgia are important. We must
pay more attention to them, than we – on our part, and the Georgian
authorities – on theirs used to. This is a difficult issue. … The
problems there are largely social; those are problems of economic
development."

The very fact of your statement can be considered as positive,
even if it is only viewed from the standpoint of public recognition
of the existing problem by such a high-ranking official of the
European Union. However, to what extent does it reflect the real
situation, reducing the problems of Javakheti Armenians to only their
socio-economic component?

Of course, the socio-economic component is present in the complex of
the problems of the Javakheti Armenians, but it does not occupy the
central and decisive position. The Armenian population of Georgia,
and the part, compactly inhabiting the south-western regions of the
country in particular, suffers from violation of their political,
civil, cultural, educational and religious rights, the rights that
are guaranteed by numerous international obligations undertaken by
Georgia and aimed at protection of ethnic minorities.

The main problems facing the Georgian and the Javakheti Armenians can
be summed up as follows: The Armenian population is disproportionately
represented in the administrative and governing bodies of the regions
of their compact residence; The Georgian authorities impose mandatory
legislative and administrative measures to compel the minorities in
the places of their compact residence to use exclusively the Georgian
language in all spheres of public life, although the vast majority
of the Javakheti Armenians by objective circumstances do not speak
the language of the titular nation; The Armenian Apostolic Church in
Georgia has no legal status, and the Georgian authorities refuse to
return to it the Armenian temples, confiscated during the Soviet era.

The very fact that you avoided mentioning in your interview
the existence of these issues, which are far from being only
socio-economic, becomes even more bizarre, considering the fact that
numerous reputable international organizations have addressed the
issue of discriminatory policy implemented by the Georgian authorities
towards the ethnic minorities in Georgia.

Thus, for example, the UN Human Rights Committee in its recommendations
adopted on October 16, 2007, proposes that the Georgian authorities
take steps to ensure freedom and equality of religion. The Committee
recommends that the Georgian authorities solve the problem of
restitution of the property, confiscated during the Soviet era to the
religious minorities. The Committee, expressing concern about the low
level of political representation of minorities, suggests that the
Georgian authorities implement measures to eliminate discrimination on
the basis of language. To this end, the Committee proposes to consider
the possibility of allowing minorities to use their own language
at the level of local government and administration and to take all
appropriate measures to ensure adequate political representation and
political participation of ethnic minorities.

Serious shortcomings regarding the compliance of Georgia with
the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National
Minorities were reflected in the report submitted in spring 2009
by the Advisory Committee of the Council of Europe. The Advisory
Committee recommends that the Georgian authorities make sure that the
policy of promoting the Georgian language is not detrimental to the
right of using the minority languages, mentioning that this requires
more resolute measures reflected both in law and in practice. The
experts of the Council of Europe, noting that national minorities
are underrepresented in the country’s political, cultural, social and
economic life, recommend that the Georgian authorities take vigorous
measures to remove legislative and practical obstacles the national
minorities come across, so that they can participate in the elected
bodies and in the executive, and work in the public service.

In addition to the above, authoritative international organizations
in 2005-2009, the Public Defender of Georgia, a number of Western
countries and international organizations in their respective reports
and statements touched upon the various manifestations of the policy
of violation of the rights of the Armenian minority of Georgia,
expressing their concern about these facts.

The President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan in his speech on September
1, 2009 also addressed the issues of concern of the Georgian and
Javakheti Armenians stating in particular that the logic of the
policy towards Javakhk should rest on the premise of "integration
without assimilation", and that the recognition of the Armenian as a
regional language, the registration of the Armenian Apostolic Church,
the steps undertaken to protect the Armenian monuments in Georgia
will only strengthen the Armenian-Georgian friendship and enhance
the atmosphere of mutual trust and understanding.

However, the Georgian authorities ignore the recommendations of the
international community and continue implementing a discriminatory
policy towards the Javakheti Armenians. Moreover, in recent years this
policy has achieved the level of repressions against the Javakheti
political activists through law enforcement agencies and judicial
authorities. During the period of 2007-2009 as a result of direct
and indirect pressure from the power structures of Georgia dozens
of political activists emigrated from Javakheti, many were tried for
fabricated criminal charges, some of them ‘bought’ their freedom at
the cost of admission of guilt in their alleged ‘crimes’, others were
tried in absentia and sentenced to various prison terms.

On July 21, 2008 the Georgian Special Forces stormed the house and the
office of the prominent Javakheti political activist Vahagn Chakhalyan,
‘found’ weapons there and on this basis immediately arrested him
as well as his father and his under-age brother. Later on Vahagn
Chakhalyan was charged with ‘organizing and active participation in
activities that disrupt public order’ and ‘hooliganism’- charges
solely based on his political activities in 2005-2006, when the
Armenian population through demonstrations and protests put forth
their legitimate claims to honor their linguistic and educational,
socio-cultural and religious rights.

On April 7, 2009, as a result of proceedings accompanied by flagrant
violations, the Javakheti political activist was sentenced to 10
years’ imprisonment in the Court of First Instance. On October 30,
2009 the Court of Appeals upheld the verdict intact.

This retaliatory act by the Georgian authorities against Vahagn
Chakhalyan has caused wide public resonance in Armenia and in the
Diaspora. A number of Armenian non-governmental organizations,
international human rights institutions, European parliamentarians
have adopted statements and taken other steps aimed at protection
of the rights of the Javakheti Armenian activist. On April 14, 2009
the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France held a
protest demonstration before the Georgian Embassy in Paris against
this unjust sentence; two days after this action Vahagn Chakhalyan
was severely beaten in prison.

Meanwhile, Georgia is a member of the ‘The European Neighborhood
Policy’ and ‘Eastern Partnership" EU programs and through them the
country receives substantial financial assistance. At the same time
Georgia openly violates the basic human rights and the rights of ethnic
minorities. Under the circumstances, by ignoring the existing problems
the EU actually authorizes the Georgian authorities to continue their
discriminatory policy towards their ethnic minorities, authorizes new
manifestations of police repressions in the Armenian-populated areas,
and authorizes new irresponsible acts that deepen day by day the
mood of fear, frustration and alienation in the Armenian-populated
regions of Georgia. Thus, the European Union involuntarily assumes
the role of an accomplice of the Georgian authorities, sharing the
responsibility for a possible aggravation of the situation.

Dear Mr. Semneby,

Based on abovementioned facts, we call upon You to take more
decisive and effective stance in this issue in order to ‘explain’
to the Georgian authorities that the communication with the Armenian
citizens of their country from the position of rude force, police
repression and deprivation of rights leads to a deadlock, and only
through recognition, effective protection and enjoyment of fundamental
rights and freedoms of individuals and minorities, as well as the
actual planting of democratic procedures is it possible to create
stable guarantees for the development of the country.

We firmly believe, that only by exercising principled position with
respect to these issues is it possible to help the Georgian authorities
in creating a functioning democratic system, which will be the real
guarantee of stability for the country and the entire South Caucasus
region as a whole.

gov.am, Armenia
Nov 29 2009

Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan received newly appointed Ambassador
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of India to the
Republic of Armenia Kumar Malhothra

Congratulating the Ambassador on the start-up of his diplomatic
mission in our country, the Prime Minister expressed hope that Mr.
Malhotra’s activity will help strengthen the relations of friendship
between our two countries. The head of the Armenian government said in
particular: `We appreciate the current high level of political
exchanges. At the same time, we would like to draw upon the existing
untapped economic potential.’

The Ambassador in turn conveyed warm greetings on behalf of the people
and the Prime Minister of India. He took the opportunity to impart his
appreciation of the Armenian community’s valuable contribution to
multicultural and multilingual public life in India. The parties
touched upon the launch of an ITT excellence center in Armenia and
spoke about agricultural and scientific cooperation. The Ambassador
outlined the new strategy of assistance to friendly countries. Also,
views have been shared on the ways taken in the face of the global
crisis.

In conclusion, the head of the Armenian government expressed hope that
the Armenian-Indian intergovernmental commission will meet in the near
future.

HATIS WOMEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM RECORDS WINNING VICTORY IN ISTANBUL

Tert.am
10:37 ~U 27.11.09

Playing in Istanbul yesterday for the EuroCup Women tournament,
Yerevan women’s basketball team HATIS scored a winning victory (87-64)
against Istanbul’s BESIKTAS.

According to the FIBA Europe website, HATIS’ Maurita Reid collected
20 points and 12 rebounds as HATIS Yerevan pulled off a major upset
with an 87-64 defeat of Besiktas in Istanbul.

Ganna Zarytska added 17 points, Bojana Vulic had 16, and Julianne
Viani, 14 as Yerevan dominated from long range, making 14 of 30
(46.6%) as a team. Reid personally made five of seven (71.4%) from
three-point range.

Also playing yesterday was Sony ATHINAIKOS (Greece) who beat Russia’s
CHEVAKATA in Group F with a final score of 83-73. Currently, HATIS
Yerevan is on equal standing with the teams from Greece and Turkey.

All three teams have gained 5 points, recording 2 victories and
1 defeat.

HATIS Yerevan will play against Sony ATHINAIKOS at 8:30 pm on December
3 in a home game in Mika stadium in Yerevan.

KARAPETYAN HAD BETTER NOT DOUBT
Yeghishe Metsarents

Lragir.am
27/11/09

The Armenian historian, researcher, author and architecture expert
specializing in the study of the historical monuments of Armenia Samvel
Karapetyan stated on these days that St. Gevorg church collapsed in
Tbilisi in practice cannot be reconstructed any more.

Artur Grigoryan, the head of the agency on history and preservation
of monuments of the Ministry of Culture did not agree with Karapetyan
saying that the church will be restored and no one has to doubt because
the Ministry of Culture has all the needed pictures and measures.

How the Armenian Ministry of Culture restores historical monuments
became clear to everyone when the Control Chamber released the results
of its studies on different monuments situated in various regions
of Armenia which have been reconstructed in accordance with their
same appearance but, say, with travertine stone. This is of course a
new word and a new style in the sphere of preservation of historical
monuments but so, the monuments become an object of the future and
not the past. Perhaps, right this way, the Tbilisi St. Gevorg will be
reconstructed. Samvel Karapetyan had better not doubt the possibilities
of the Armenian Ministry of Culture.

St. Gevorg will be restored up to being unrecognizable. This has also
a strategical significance. Merely, we need to understand it. As we
know, Georgians and the Georgian Church have an eye on the Armenian
churches as they try to own them. The best means to struggle against
this perspective would be to give a new appearance to the Armenian
churches covering them with travertine stone, granite, euro-doors and
windows. Thus, they will become unrecognizable. Since we have restored
them, we know that those are our churches and Georgians will no longer
recognize them. And if they do, what they will try to own. Naturally,
they will be perplexed and surprised at where the ancient churches
used to stand there disappeared.

So, the most optimal way to preserve the Armenian churches in Georgia
seems to be found – they need to be euro-reconstructed.

PRESIDENT SERZH SARGSYAN RECEIVES ARMENIAN-ARGENTINEAN BUSINESSMAN EDUARDO ERNEKYAN

Panorama.am
17:02 25/11/2009

President Serzh Sargsyan received today the Armenian-Argentinean
businessman Eduardo Ernekyan.

Ernekyan introduced the process of the investment projects implemented
in different fields of economy and things to do in the upcoming
future. He highlighted that the global crisis hadn’t much affected
his plans over Armenia’s economy and all the initiatives are under way.

According to President’s press office, Serzh Sargsyan signified that
the construction works of "Zvartnots" Airport new complex be finished
in terms determined to ensure the annual service of about 3mln. of
passengers in 2011, as well as the due implementation of post service
activities both in municipal and rural areas.

Serzh Sargsyan said he encourages the investment of novelties and
fresh ideas into the field of agriculture.