Author: Vorskanian Yeghisabet

FINAL DECISION ON TURNING CONVERSE BANK INTO OJSC TO BE MADE BY AUGUST

YEREVAN, MAY 12, NOYAN TAPAN. The Converse Bank will make a final
decision on turning Converse Bank CJSC (Closed Joint Stock Company)
into an open joint stock company (OJSC) by August 2006. The bank’s
director general Artak Hanesian stated this at the May 12 press
conference. According to him, work on introduction of corporate
governance is currently underway at the bank. In this connection, some
changes were made in the bank’s regulations, in its council and
executive body. Particularly, former director general of the bank
Smbat Nasibian who owns 15% of shares has become a member of the
council. The remaining stake of Converse Bank belongs to a
non-resident legal entity and a non-resident natural person. It was
noted that Converse Bank is conducting negotiations with the USAID on
the issue of guaranteeing 50% of the bond issue.

THE COST OF STRUGGLE AGAINST CORRUPTION

Lragir.am
11 May 06

Several businessmen members of parliament, members of the Orinats
Yerkir faction of the National Assembly submitted applications
on seceding from this political party. This step followed the
parliamentary debates on the government policy on privatization.

Speaker Arthur Baghdasaryan, the leader of the Orinats Yerkir,
criticized the privatization policy. Then the famous interview of
Arthur Baghdasaryan with the German newspaper Frankfurt Algemeine
followed, in which he expressed his standpoint on the internal and
external policies of Armenia.

These two events stirred up the political life of Armenia. Incessant
discussions involving politicians and press thought resembled a
performance of a rather unskilled band directed by a conductor, tending
to make biased propagandist stresses. Naturally, the status quo that
has recently formed in Armenia and its outstanding representatives
would not tolerate any political standpoint that could appear as
a threat against the status quo, which suggests preventing even
the smallest sparks of change. The opinion of status quo agents is
approximately the following: we do not need changes, let it remain
the way it is. Besides, they announce that they have nothing to do
with what is going on these days, in particular the resignation of
the businessmen members of parliament and the attempts at dissolving
the Orinats Yerkir faction.

The recent “outflow” of businessmen is rather typical and displays
the peculiarities of the political and economic system in Armenia. It
is hard to tell if these businessmen joined the Orinats Yerkir out
of an ideological urge and left the Orinats Yerkir again out of an
ideological compulsion. Their behavior is clear: they fear losing
their property and business if their party appears in a difficult
state. This shows that in a system that Armenia has business and
property is not protected, while the businessmen in the parliament
could have tried to create a new environment where they would not
have to be driven by an “ideological compulsion.”

This is something to be handled by politicians as well, to establish
healthy and free competition in economy. This is something that the
speaker of the National Assembly has been trying to do, not absolutely,
of course. What has taken up supposes reduction of black economy,
corruption, a normal policy on privatization, etc. Only in this
case would business be protected. On the other hand, the personal
interests and the property, mostly obtained illegally and unfairly,
of the status quo agents is endangered.

It is interesting to know, however, what the status quo and
particularly the businessman rely on? The same status quo is capable
of devouring its children, more exactly, it regularly devours its
children, for every now and then new lackeys emerge who offer a better
and higher-level service to the system and in return they must get
a share from the property. And Armenia is too small and nothing is
left to share. Hence, this sharing will be carried out at the expense
of the former “followers of the ideology.” And this will last until
people come to realize that the meaning of life is living dignifiedly.

For the standpoint of some mass media, the publications on
the developments related with the Orinats Yerkir Party confirm,
unfortunately, the assessments of the local and international experts
that the clan mechanisms have been established in this sphere, with
press turning an instrument of the system. What a pity!

Anatolian Times, Turkey
May 9 2006

4 Parliamentarians Due To France On May 9, Arinc

STOCKHOLM – Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc said a 4-people
delegation comprising parliamentarians will go to France to have
talks to prevent a bill submitted to French Parliament making any
rejection of the so-called Armenian genocide a crime.
Arinc, currently in Sweden on a formal visit, told A.A. correspondent
that the bill was envisaged to be discussed in French Parliament on
May 18th.

Arinc said meetings of the Turkish parliamentarians will last for 6
days.

RA NEWLY APPOINTED AMBASSADOR TO UNITED ARAB EMIRATES VAHAGN
MELIKIAN’S BIOGRAPHIC DATA

YEREVAN, MAY 8, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. As we have already
informed, by the May 4 decree, RA President Robert Kocharian appointed
Vahagn Melikian the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of
the Republic of Armenia to the United Arab Emirates. The RA Ministry’s
Press and Information Department submitted the newly appointed
Ambassador’s biographic data to Noyan Tapan:

Vahagn Melikian was born in Yerevan, in 1967. He graduated from the
Yerevan State University Department of Oriental Studies. In 1993 he
attended special courses of the Diplomatic Academy of Egypt. He has
worked at the RA Foreign Ministry’s system since 1991, as a
referent. In 1991-1992 he worked as the RA Foreign Minister’s
Assistant. In 1993-1996 he was the Second Secretary of the RA Embassy
to Greece. In 1996-1997 he worked as the Secretariate Chief of the RA
Foreign Ministry. In 1997-2000 he was the First Secretary of the RA
Embassy to Germany. He has been the head of the “RA State Protocol”
since 2001 up to now. The diplomatic degree is the Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary. He is engaged in lecturer’s activity. He
knows Russian, English, French, Arabic. He is married, has two
children.

POPE CONDOLED WITH RELATIVES OF VICTIMS A-320 AIRPLANE CRASH

PanARMENIAN.Net
04.05.2006 02:46 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Pope Benedict XVI condoled with relatives of the
victims of the crash of A-320 airplane, which resulted in death of
113 people.

Official Vatican sent a respective telegram to Armenia today. The
message says, “Benedict XVI prays for the souls of the victims of the
tragedy,” as well as “those, who lost their relatives and friends”
in the crash, reports the Associated Press.

DIVERS SEARCH FOR 113 PEOPLE KILLED IN CRASH OF ARMENIAN AIRLINER
Mike Eckel

AP Worldstream
May 03, 2006

Divers searched storm-churned waters off Russia’s Black Sea coast
Wednesday, searching for the remains of 113 people who were killed
when an Armenian passenger airliner crashed in rough weather as it
was heading for a landing, emergency officials said.

It was the worst air disaster in Armenia’s recent history.

Armenian airline officials said they believed the crash was due to the
stormy weather, and Russian Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman
Viktor Beltsov said that this was considered the likeliest cause. He
said that the clouds were as low as 100 meters (330 feet) above the
ground at the time of the crash.

Earlier, Russian officials said that the age of the aircraft and
technical factors could have been involved. Investigators did not
believe terrorism was a factor.

The Airbus A-320, which belonged to the Armenian airline Armavia,
disappeared from radar screens just under 6 kilometers (3.7 miles)
from the shore and crashed after making a turn and heading toward the
Adler airport near the Russian resort of Sochi, Beltsov said. Rescue
officials in the ministry’s southern regional branch said the 105
passengers and eight crew members aboard the plane flying from the
Armenian capital Yerevan, including six children, were all killed.

Gurgen Seroboyan, whose 23-year-old fiancee Lucenie Gevorkian was a
flight attendant on the flight, wept as he waited at Yerevan airport
for a charter flight that was to take relatives of the crash victims
to Sochi.

Samvel Oganesian said his 23-year-old son Vram and his friend Hamlet
Abgarian had been heading to Sochi for vacation.

“Why did he go?” Oganesian asked in anguish, over and over again.

In Sochi’s airport, about 100 tearful relatives _ nearly all
Armenians _ kept up an anguished vigil in a waiting hall. One man
became hysterical and had to be taken away by ambulance.

Women, sobbing, held handkerchiefs to their mouths, while men sat
silently, their heads in their hands.

Aram Sargasian, 22, said he had two uncles on the ill-fated plane
who had been heading to Sochi for a weeklong vacation. The city has
a large ethnic Armenian population.

“I adored them. This is all like a dream,” he said, shaking his head.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian President Robert
Kocharian declared Friday a day of mourning in both countries, the
Kremlin said.

Wreckage from the plane was found not far from the shoreline, Beltsov
said, and Sergei Kudinov, the head of the southern district office
of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said the fuselage was found at
a depth of 400 meters (1,300 feet).

Search and rescue teams have pulled 33 bodies from the water,
regional emergency officials said; none was wearing a life jacket,
indicating they did not have sufficient warning to prepare for an
emergency landing.

The airline said that 26 Russians, one Ukrainian and one Georgian
were among the passengers. The rest were Armenian citizens.

Twenty-five boats as well as divers were involved in the search,
and a deep-sea robot was to be used to try to recover the plane’s
black box, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. But a Russian
aviation official, Rudolf Teymurazov of the Intergovernmental Aviation
Committee, expressed doubt the black boxes could be found since some
parts of the plane could be as deep as 2 kilometers (1 mile).

“If the black boxes are located not in some segment of the plane,
but on the (sea) bottom, then it will be impossible to find them,”
the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.

The water temperature was 12 degrees Celsius (53 F).

The plane broke up on impact with the water and passengers’ personal
belongings and plane fragments were found scattered over an area
spreading 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the crash site.

Rough seas, driving rain and low visibility were hampering the search,
Russian news agencies reported.

Beltsov said the plane, which disappeared from radar screens at about
2:15 a.m. (2215 GMT Tuesday, went down while trying to make a repeat
attempt at an emergency landing. However, the Interfax news agency
quoted the Russian air control agency as saying that the plane’s crew
had not declared any emergency.

Armavia deputy commercial director Andrei Agadzhanov said in Yerevan
that the crew had communicated with Sochi ground controllers while
the plane was flying over the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. The ground
controllers said the weather was poor but the plane could still land,
the representative said. Just before the landing, however, the ground
controllers told the crew to make another circle in the air before
approaching the airport.

He said the crew was highly experienced, the airplane was in good
condition and that weather conditions were “certainly” the cause.

The Airbus A-320 was manufactured in 1995 and had been acquired on
leasing by the airline. The aircraft underwent full-scale servicing
a year ago.

Agadzhanov said that the airline’s deputy general director, Vyacheslav
Yaralov, had been aboard.

Investigators from the airline and Armenian and French aviation
authorities were to fly to the crash scene later Wednesday morning.

Armavia is Armenia’s largest airline. It is 70-percent owned by
Russia’s second-largest airline Sibir, and it acquired routes from
Armenian Airlines and Armenian International Airlines when those
operations fell into financial troubles.

________

AP reporters Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, and Sergei Venyavsky
in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, contributed to this story.

PRESS RELEASE
Armenian Center for National and International Studies
75 Yerznkian Street
Yerevan 375033, Armenia
Tel: (+374 – 10) 52.87.80 or 27.48.18
Fax: (+374 – 10) 52.48.46
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Website:

May 2, 2006

RAFFI HOVANNISIAN IN BELGIUM FOR TRANSATLANTIC FORUM

Meets with Solana, Scheffer, Basescu, McCain, Bennett

Brussels — Raffi K. Hovannisian, Armenia’s first Minister of Foreign
Affairs, represented Armenia at an international policy conclave which
was convened here from April 28 to 30 under the auspices of the German
Marshall Fund of the United States, the Federal Government of Belgium,
and the Bertelsmann Stiftung of Germany.

Entitled “Transatlantic Challenges in a Global Era,” the Brussels
Forum brought together world leaders, public figures, diplomats,
academicians, activists, and renowned journalists in order to reassess
the transatlantic agenda from American, European, and neighborhood
perspectives; to discuss the threats of terrorism and pandemics
across the globe of the 21st Century; to explore global competition
in the public and private sectors; to chart the course of democracy
and geopolitics in wider Europe, the Middle East, and China; and
to contemplate transatlantic energy security, national identities,
and international integration.

In his intervention, Raffi Hovannisian addressed the track record
of the transatlantic alliance and examined its contribution to
the transition from Cold War to European cooperation. He also
underscored the imperative correlation between collective security
and shared core values both within the alliance and for potential
partners on its periphery. In particular, he urged the stringent and
equal application to all national actors of the highest standards
of democracy, rule of law, human rights protection, and genocide
prevention and condemnation–irrespective of their place and role in
the international system.

Against the backdrop of contemporary democracy movements and
geopolitical developments, Raffi Hovannisian held informal meetings
with Dr. Javier Solana, Secretary General of the Council of the
European Union; NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer; Romanian
President Traian Basescu; and United States Senators John McCain and
Bob Bennett.

In the margins of the conference, Raffi Hovannisian also met with Crown
Prince Philippe of Belgium; Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt;
General James Jones, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe; Chairman
Elmar Brok of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs;
Belgian Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Karel De Gucht;
Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay; U.S. Senators George Voinovich
and John Edwards (former); Jordanian Senator Marwan al-Muasher; former
Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio; DaimlerChrysler Chairman Dieter
Zetsche; and several others.

Hovannisian and his conference colleagues were received at the Royal
Palace by His Highness King Albert of Belgium.

Raffi Hovannisian, who is founder of the Armenian Center for National
and International Studies and the National Citizens’ Initiative,
currently chairs the Heritage Party of Armenia.

TOP CHRISTIAN LEADERS JOIN ‘SAVE DARFUR’ RALLY

Christian Post, CA
May 1 2006

WASHINGTON – Christian speakers were among the religious leaders,
human rights activists, politicians, athletes and actors that convened
to rally for greater U.S. involvement in the Darfur conflict on Sunday.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators wearing T-shirts and waving signs
such as “Never Again – Stop the Genocide,” “Don’t allow Sudan’s
sin to become a shame on the World!” and “No Excuses!” filled the
National Mall demanding an end to what the United Nation calls one
of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

Prominent Christian leaders were among politicians, a Nobel Prize
winner, an Academy Award Winner, and heads of non-government
organizations invited to speak at the “Save Darfur” rally.

The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of
the National Association of Evangelicals, prayed for the situation
in Darfur during his speech.

“We pray your blessings, your comforting will fall upon the enslaved,
the victims on this day. They are there but we are here and when
they are persecuted, we are persecuted,” prayed Cizik. “When they
are hungry, we are hungry. Grant us the knowledge to understand that,
Heavenly Father.

“We pray as well for the political leaders of the world, that their
conscience would be stricken with the lost and suffering and that
they would be moved to action. We are people of conscience and
together we can stop the genocide. May it be so. Amen,” concluded
the NAE representative.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.,
also called for action, encouraging the United States and other
countries to make a stronger commitment to saving Darfur.

“Our nation has to get onboard,” declared McCarrick. “Every nation
has to get onboard. Now is the time. Now is the time to put our money
where our mouth is. Now is the time!”

With at least 180,000 people dead and some 2 million homeless,
according to The Associated Press, the ongoing violence between the
government militias and ethnic minority rebels in the western Darfur
region is one of the most serious in the world today.

“This issue that we face today is not only an issue for Americans
but for every citizen of the world,” the Rev. Geoff Tunnicliffe,
international director of the World Evangelical Alliance, said
on Sunday.

“The Scriptures make it very clear that we must stand with those who
are voiceless and powerless. Today we stand with the Darfur people
and speak out loudly against the outrageous atrocities they are being
subjected,” Tunnicliffe said.

Other Christian leaders that spoke at the Save Darfur rally included
Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics &
Religious Liberties Commission; the Rev. Walter Fauntroy of New Bethel
Baptist Church of Washington, D.C.; the Rev. John L. McCullough,
executive director and CEO of Church World Service; Tony Kireopoulos
of the National Council of Churches; and the Rev. Fr. Tateos Abdalian
of the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church.

TURKEY’S DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS ARE AIMED AT REPLACING RUSSIAN BASES IN
GEORGIA BY ITS OWN ONES

Yerevan, April 28. ArmInfo. If one looks at what is going on around
Iran, one can see that Turkey has intensified its diplomatic dialogue
with Washington: Ankara is trying to derive as much profit as possible
from the situation and the Americans are interested in Turkey, says
expert of Turkey Ruben Safrastyan.

He says that Turkey’s efforts are aimed at replacing the Russian bases
in Georgia by its own ones. In 2001-2002 the Americans decided to act
in the region on their own rather than through Turkey and it was then
that they sent their instructors to Georgia, says Safrastyan. But
things may change. The US needs Turkey in its actions against Iran and
so the Americans may allow the Turks to intensify their activities in
the region

“RUSSIA FOR RUSSIANS!” SLOGAN WILL RUIN RUSSIA

Yerevan, April 26. ArmInfo. A number of Russian politicians, public
figures and sportsmen from the Union of Civil Resistance to Fascism
have asked the Public Prosecutor of Russia to give a legal assessment
of the growing xenophobia in the country.

Russian TV reports them to urge the Public Prosecutor to take measures
against the authors of the slogan “Russia for Russians!”

The chairwoman of the commission on information policy of the Russia’s
Federation Council Lyudmila Narusova says that the slogan “Russia
for Russians!” is not only non-constructive but also criminal and is
leading multinational and multi-religious Russia to collapse.

“Hence, we are asking you to give a legal assessment of this slogan
and to take measures against those propagating it,” she says.