Category: News

THE CENTRAL BANK OF ARMENIA AND UNDP JOIN EFFORTS TO DEVELOP
ArmenPress
June 7 2004
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS: The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) and
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the first
e-payment system in Armenia. Mr. Tigran Sargsyan, Chairman of the
CBA and Ms. Lise Grande, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident
Representative, presented the initiative to the mass media and the
first online payment was made by plastic card.
The e-payment system is a joint initiative of the Armenian Card
(ArCa) Unified Payment System and UNDP. Through the system, online
payments for public utilities, including telephone, electricity, gas,
and water can be made using ArCa cards. The system can also be used to
buy top-ups for the ArmenTel mobile prepaid system and Arminco Internet
services. Plans are also underway to expand the system to allow ArCa
cardholders to shop online and benefit from other paid services.
The online payment system is based on the highest standards of
transaction security and user convenience. The long-term goal of the
system is to expand Armenia’s infrastructure for non-cash transactions
and create a reliable and user-friendly environment for e-Commerce.
In her comments, Ms. Lise Grande, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP
Resident Representative, noted: “It’s important to see this online
payment system as an important step in developing an information
society in Armenia. Modern Information and Communication Technologies
are essential for creating a modern economy in Armenia and ensuring
equal access to information for all citizens.”
Mr. Tigran Sargsyan, Chairman of the Central Bank of Armenia,
reiterated the “significance of the e-payment system for the further
development of the banking system in Armenia, particularly the
establishment of e-banking.”
The Armenian Card was established by the CBA and ten commercial banks
in March 2000 with the aim of developing a new unified payment system
in Armenia. Today, 13 commercial banks are part of the ArCa system,
and more than 46,000 plastic cards of this type are in circulation.

PRESIDENT KOCHARIAN HAS WORKING MEETINGS
ArmenPress
June 7 2004
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS: Armenian president Robert Kocharian had a
working meeting today with the chairman of the State Water Committee
Andranik Andreasian. Kocharian’s press office said the committee
chairman introduced the president to the ongoing reforms of the
sector and the process of implementation of projects in cooperation
with international organizations.
During another working meeting the president discussed today the
shortcomings and problems reported during special examinations,
set for secondary school graduates, claiming for gold medals, equal
to finishing school with honors. A presidential oversight service
was watching the examinations as observers. Kocharian was quoted by
the press office as saying that there is a range of related issues
that cannot be ignored, especially that in a month time entrance
examinations to state-run universities are set to start.
“All reported shortcomings should be completely eliminated during the
university entrance examinations,” Kocharian was quoted as saying. He
said schools lack proper supervision, and a practice is formed that
disgraces the idea of gold medals. The president said graduation from
secondary school with honors has become a kind of an end in itself
with a prospect of easing the entrance examination to university and
‘this motive” has deformed a lot of things at schools. The president
said his conclusion was based on observations, reported to him by
oversight service.
Vahram Barseghian, the head of the oversight chamber, presented the
facts, shortcomings and other problems of concern, which the service
has identified. He said many of graduates, claiming for gold medals,
failed to confirm their high knowledge of separate school subjects
and also a great number failed to participate in the examinations,
which he said was “an evidence that school principals violate the
principles of choosing graduates, claiming of gold medals.”
Kocharian has instructed the government to consider the issue of
granting graduates with honors privileges during university entrance
examinations.

HARRISON’S UNRUFFLED BY ARMENIAN
By Jim Black
Sunday Express
June 6, 2004
WBO featherweight champion Scott Harrison isn’t in the least fazed by
the news Armenian rival William Abelyan has enlisted the services of
Mexican legend Manuel Medina in a bid to plot a world title takeover.
Harrison insists that Abelyan is wasting his time after claiming:
“There is no more awkward southpaw than Medina – and I beat him.”
But Abelyan believes that his own southpaw stance will prove to be
Harrison’s undoing – with the help of five-time world champion Medina.
Abelyan says having 33-year-old Medina in his camp is effectively
the final piece in the jigsaw, because the Mexican knows Harrison’s
style inside-out after gaining a split points decision against the
Glaswegian last July.
The fact Harrison, 26, won back the crown at Braehead four months
later when he inflicted an 11th round stoppage on Medina appears to
have escaped Abelyan’s notice.
“Medina has a wealth of experience and can help me plan my tactics
to beat Harrison, ” said the 25-year-old challenger.
“With Medina in my camp I have a huge advantage over Harrison because
he is supplying me with vital information.”
But Harrison posed the question:
“Why does Abelyan need another boxer to tell him how to fight?
Surely he is capable of planning his own tactics.
“Abelyan says he’s been studying videos of me and when he gets in
the ring he’ll know me better than I know myself.
“But by the sound of things he doesn’t know too much about me if he
has to rely on Medina to fill him in.
“Abelyan has had plenty to say so far but I much prefer to do my
talking in the ring.
“If Abelyan imagines that he has me rattled with his comments he’s
wrong – I’ve heard it all before.”
Harrison has been sparring with Englishman Patrick Mullings, the
former British and Commonwealth champion he out-pointed in 2000 to
take the latter crown.
The arm muscle injury which forced Harrison to postpone the planned
May 29 meeting has healed completely and the champion is adamant that
he’s in great shape.
“Mullings has been an ideal sparring partner because, like Abelyan,
he is a southpaw and he is a good mover who throws a lot of punches,
” said Harrison, who insists that he won’t stop until he is recognised
as the top featherweight in the world.
He added: “The Americans still rank Manny Pacquiao, Juan Marquez
and Marco Antonio Barrera ahead of me and I won’t rest until I am
recognised as No 1 “But for the time being I am concentrating only on
beating Abelyan. I am entirely focused on what lies ahead on June 19.”
Harrison, already a two-time world champion, hasn’t made it into the
top 10 British ring stars of all time, according to a vote by Boxing
News readers.
But two other Scottish ring greats do feature in the list topped by
former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis. Former world lightweight
champion Ken Buchanan from Edinburgh is ranked fifth, one place higher
than Gorbalsborn flyweight Benny Lynch.

Platform souls: New plans for King’s Cross in London show the massive scale of the venture
The Guardian (London)
June 7, 2004
Platform souls: New plans for King’s Cross in London show the massive
scale of the venture. And the smart money – including that of New
York art tycoon Larry Gagosian – is already moving in. By Jonathan
Glancey
The hype surrounding the opening of the Gagosian Gallery in King’s
Cross, London, has been so great and the plaudits have been so
glittering that I expected to find something very special indeed.
Not, perhaps, a riposte to the Bilbao Guggenheim by Frank Gehry but a
landmark building; an artistic adventure.
The Gagosian Gallery proves to be a modest creation, housed in a
former garage in Britannia Street, a rats’ alley smelling of diesel
and urine, scuttling across the Metropolitan and Circle underground
lines as they rattle between Farringdon and King’s Cross-St Pancras.
Behind the gaunt facade, Larry Gagosian’s architects, Caruso St John,
best known for their New Art Gallery, in Walsall, which opened in
2000, have opened up bright, cavernous, concrete-floored, top-lit
white spaces. These are particularly refined white spaces; they have
something of a religious air about them, not least because on a
weekday afternoon this private gallery is as quiet as an abandoned
city church. A security guard sits like a piece of isolated artwork
by the locked door, while bright young things potter about at a vast
reception desk faced with important catalogues. A solitary, studious
looking fellow surveys the brown and white Cy Twombly abstracts,
which hang from the spotless white walls with a degree of respect
owed to icons and statues elsewhere.
None of this is a criticism of this new London art space, which is
one of the best of its kind since Charles Saatchi’s original gallery
in St John’s Wood, designed by the late Max Gordon. Caruso St John
are among our most thoughtful architects, as careful with the process
of building as they are with design. And, yet, for all its graceful
substance, the gallery has something of a temporary air about it.
Should the top end of the art market take a tumble between now and
the completion of the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras in 2007, it
would make a particularly fine restaurant, office or nightclub.
The area will certainly want these as its redevelopment gathers pace
over the next five years. Seedy for decades, King’s Cross is
fast-becoming a blue-chip investment for property developers. Quite
how the promethean building works promised here will pan out is
anyone’s guess. For every impressive new civil engineering
achievement, there will be routine chain stores; for every art
gallery, a fast-food joint. Expect, in time-honoured English
tradition, a mix of the sublime and the banal: the Gormenghast glory
of St Pancras raised to fresh, pinnacled heights as Eurostar trains
snake in and out on their three-mile-a-minute race to and from Paris
with its cafes, restaurants, shops and art galleries. Penny-plain
King’s Cross station stripped of 1970s tat. Both stations are
attended by millions of square feet of gleaming new offices, some
1,800 flats, dozens of shops, washed and brushed public spaces, three
new footbridges over the Regent’s Canal, restored historic buildings
and, so the developers say, more art galleries.
This leviathan plan, announced last week, for the 67-acre area north
of the Gagosian Gallery, has been prepared by a property consortium
comprising Argent St George, Exel, London and Continental Railways.
Allies and Morrison, immaculate Moderns, and Demetri Porphyrios, the
most convincing of the Prince of Wales’s school of classicists, have
been appointed architects in charge of a development that, in scale
at least, matches the heroic urban projects that shaped Victorian
London. The £2bn project will take at least 15 years to complete. It
may yet be rejected by the mayor of London, who will surely find its
tallest 19-storey towers too modest and its plan not sufficiently
dedicated to the concerns of big business. It may yet be called in
for public inquiry by the government, and either held up, heavily
edited or abandoned while lawyers rack up prodigious fees.
Whatever the process – the rise and fall of commercial and
professional reputations, the jaw-dropping fees, the performance
bonuses, pension top-ups, the gongs awarded and brown envelopes
exchanged – King’s Cross will surely be redeveloped on a titanic
scale within the next 10 and 20 years. The dodgy young men,
working-class street-walkers and middle-class kerb-crawlers will move
on, along with the purveyors of kebabs, tattoos and grubby mags.
Spick and span corporate offices, big-brand shops, chain cafes and
relentless street furniture interspersed with well-meant public art
will take their place.
Architects of the calibre of Allies and Morrison and Demetri
Porphyrios will do their best to raise the standards of St Pancras
but they cannot hope to control the quality of the tenants who will
flock here in coming years. There will be something like 30,000 new
jobs here, while millions of passengers travelling to and from London
and the Continent, and looking for diversion, will mill around King’s
Cross. A committed few might waft down New Britannia Street to pick
up a canvas by Cy Twombly or a pickled lamb by Damien Hirst.
Gagosian, however, ought to know what most people will want. This
sharp, silver-haired Armenian-American, nicknamed “Go-Go”, began
making money in Santa Monica in the 1970s. “I would buy prints for $
2-$ 3, put them in aluminium frames and sell them for $ 15,” says the
Donald Trump of the art world. If Gagosian likes art, he likes
nothing better than closing deals. He opened a small gallery behind
Regent Street a few years ago, also a conversion by Caruso St John,
before homing in on King’s Cross, which offers an optimum deal: a
place to show big, headline-stealing artworks – tens of tons of Serra
– in a handsome setting in the sort of grubby street that makes the
art world trill with excitement, while making a quiet future killing
on the property market.
Gagosian likes art, and knows that this, with all its high society
connections, brings kudos, glamour and outlandishly big bucks. Should
you happen to be a wheeler-dealer who builds a fashionable gallery
showing fashionable artists in one of the most fashionable
up-and-coming parts of London, how can you possibly go wrong?
Gagosian’s gung-ho, yet outwardly, highly refined, venture into the
London art world and King’s Cross is, perhaps, to be preferred to the
run-of-the-mill development that could take place here if we fail to
keep a sharp eye on the area and the hugely ambitious “masterplans”
dreamed up by one developer after the other over the past 15 years.
No one should doubt that the real artwork here is the arrival of the
high-speed Eurostar line. This, like the Midland Railway’s grand
Gothic entry into St Pancras some 140 years ago, will change the face
of the surrounding area, including Britannia Street, for ever.
guardian.co.uk/glancey
Graceful substance . . . the new Gagosian Gallery. Below, the
interior, with Rachel Whiteread’s Ghost. Below right, a model of the
planned King’s Cross redevelopment
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
June 7, 2004, Monday
ARMENIA: DEFENSE EXPENSES INCREASE
Armenia plans to increase the defense budget in 2005. This statement
was made by Serj Sargsyan, Defense Minister and Secretary of the
Security Council, after the end of a hearing in the parliament. This
year Armenia’s defense expenses amount to around $85 million. Serj
Sargsyan noted that the government intends to increase servicemen’s
money allowances and rearm the Armed Forces.
Source: Krasnaya Zvezda, June 3, 2004, p. 3
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AND NOW, HEALTH BOSSES PLAN TO SEEK DONATIONS!
by Debashis Konar
The Times of India
June 6, 2004
Finally, the state health system may just have the right survival kit
The state government’s health department is now all set to go on an
overdrive to collect donations to develop the health system in the
state. To make the process of collection of donations smooth, the
newly set up West Bengal State Health and Welfare Samiti (WBSHWS)
has decided to go for a change in its constitutional bylaws.
The WBSHWS has been formed clubbing all the disease control
programmes in the state for better monitoring of all the disease
control programmes. But it was unable to accept donations for not
having the status of an entity eligible to provide income tax rebate
to the donors. During WBSHWS’s first annual general meeting held
last Wednesday, the state health minister, Dr Surya Kanta Mishra,
ratified the requisite norms so that the Samiti can collect funds and
function in a better way. Dr Mishra said that the main objective of
the Samiti was to go for various disease control measure in a more
effective manner. “The funds from foreign donors couldn’t be properly
utilised due to certain norms. Now ratification of the norms will
enable the state health department to receive grants easily.”
A senior health department officer said that earlier the Samiti could
not accept grants of the Armenian Church and the Japanese Consulate.
The Armenian Church had offered to donate a sum of Rs 50 lakhs and the
Japanese Consulate had offered Rs 40 lakhs. According to him, the state
health department is planning to approach various international donors
for funds for various health projects. The ratification paves the way
for the Samiti to accept grant from individuals, various organisations,
and even from the foreign agencies and foreign governments. The health
department is already planning to accept grants from GTZ, a German
organisation, for improving the health infrastructure in the state. The
state health department had earlier taken a World Bank loan of Rs 700
crores for developing the hospitals in the state, which is going to
slow down in September. “So the state health minister is seeking for
alternate sources of funding to run various disease control projects,”
said the health department official.
[email protected]

Giving New Democracies Counsel
by Anitha Reddy, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post
June 7, 2004 Monday
Final Edition
Development Associates Inc., an Arlington consulting firm, won the
right to compete for work advising legislatures of young democracies.
Three other local companies — Financial Markets International Inc.
and Development Alternatives Inc., both of Bethesda, and Management
Systems International of Washington — won access to the contract,
which is administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
All four will now bid against each other for projects around the world,
typically worth less than $10 million each. The contract’s value,
for the companies combined, is capped at $100 million.
The consultants are usually hired for specific assignments and
include former state legislators and congressional representatives,
sociologists, software engineers and political science professors.
They work in teams, usually made up of about six people and led by a
few Americans, and counsel legislators on a wide range of practical
issues. The jobs usually last for three years.
In countries where the laborious process of updating laws is still
done by hand or with rudimentary software, “people don’t know what
laws are passed and they keep passing the same law over and over
again,” said Jack Sullivan, an executive at Development Associates
who oversees legislative consulting projects. To solve that problem,
the teams set up computer systems and teach legislative staff how to
enter laws and pending bills into databases.
The consultants also teach parliamentary research staff members how to
respond to legislators’ requests, such as a summary of laws on a given
topic. They also edit early drafts of legislation and show lawmakers’
staffs how to write laws briefly and clearly.
The advisers also give courses in political jockeying. In Armenia,
consultants from Development Associates are counseling the legislature
on how to assert itself in contests with the executive branch. That’s
a tricky issue in unstable democracies where a powerful executive
frequently overwhelms the legislators. One suggestion: Call more
members of the executive branch before the legislature to explain
their actions in formal hearings.
“In many of these systems, the legislatures are rubber stamps for
the executive branch and many would like not to be,” Sullivan said.

Baku’s Building Boom Reveals Grave Inequity
By Chloe Arnold
Moscow Times
June 8 2004
BAKU, Azerbaijan — If you can judge a country’s economy by the amount
of construction work going on, Azerbaijan is booming. You can’t move
in the capital, Baku, for all the construction sites, towering cranes
and wobbly trucks stacked high with joists and scaffolding.
>>From my bedroom window I can see the empty shells of at least half
a dozen high-rise blocks. With money flooding in from oil sales —
Azerbaijan backs onto the Caspian Sea, which is believed to hold
the world’s third largest-reserves — the race is on to build luxury
apartments for all the newcomers setting up shop here.
But it isn’t just foreigners they are catering to. The number of
Azeris with cash to throw around is on the rise, too. When I first
arrived in Baku, you could get to anywhere in the center of town
within 10 minutes.
Today the roads are so clogged with New Azeris driving shiny black
Mercs or executive jeeps, you’re hard-pressed to make it in less than
half an hour. In fact, these days you’re better off walking.
But it’s the rate at which buildings are going up that’s so alarming.
Baku’s skyline has changed more in the last 18 months than it has for
more than a century. And contractors are falling over each other to
sell their apartments before anyone else. Friends recently bought a
flat in a new luxury block, only to discover that they have to step
over piles of rubble to get to it: The higher floors aren’t quite
finished, they were told.
With all these sleek new buildings appearing across the city, the
difference between rich and poor has become even starker. Just behind
the extensive new Taekwondo Center for Azerbaijan — all pillars and
marble and dancing fountains — stands a half-finished block with no
electricity or water, where hundreds of refugees from the war with
neighboring Armenia are living.
They’re so close to the martial arts school they can see the children
of rich Azeris practicing their moves. But they’re as far from being
able to afford to attend the classes as it’s possible to be.
Nevertheless, I’m not sure I’d want to live in any of the new
buildings. They’re built to Turkish specifications, but when you
remember the earthquake in Izmir in 1999, which killed 17,000 people,
that doesn’t sound reassuring. Many of the casualties were living in
houses built so shoddily that they simply caved in.
The frightening thing is that Baku, too, lies on a fault line. There
are regular ground tremors, and we’re due for another full-scale quake
sooner rather than later. And when that happens, the people who bought
penthouse suites aren’t going to be laughing any more. If they live
to tell the tale, that is.
Chloe Arnold is a freelance journalist based in Baku, Azerbaijan.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Summary of “Armed Forces” military programme on Armenian Public TV on 5 June
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
5 Jun 04
1.0003 The opening ceremony of the Armenian Defence Ministry’s National
Strategic Research Institute named after Commander Drastamat Kanayan
took place in Yerevan on 31 May. Video showed the ceremony attended
by Drastamat Kanayan’s grandchild Philip Kanayan, Armenian Defence
Minister Serzh Sarkisyan and other high-ranking Armenian officers
and military attaches of foreign embassies in Armenia. Col Haik
Kotandzhyan, head of the institute, was shown speaking about the
institute’s future work.
2. 0614 Armenian Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan visited Tavush
and Lori Regions. Video showed military units of the region and a
power station, construction sites, the Dilizhan health resort and
Yerablur pantheon.
3. 1202 Armenia celebrates International Children Day. Video showed
the celebrations attended by children.
4. 1445 Video showed air defence units, marching soldiers, military
aircraft, training and exercises.
5. 2009 The Armenian Defence Ministry’s medical department has received
reanimobiles and medical equipment. Video showed head of the department
Grigor Adayan speaking about the new equipment.
6. 2410 The state of combat readiness of various units and
implementation of military programmes was the focus of attention of
inspections. Video showed the chief inspector of the Armenian Defence
Ministry, Col-Gen Gurgen Daribaltayan, reporting the results of the
inspection, the units, exercises and military hardware.
7. 2746 Video showed a military unit where sergeant Sergey Kekechyan
and other recruits serve.

Leader of Karabakh leaves for France
Mediamax news agency
7 Jun 04
Yerevan, 7 June: The president of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic
[NKR], Arkadiy Gukasyan, left for France today.
The head of the information department under the NKR president told
Mediamax news agency today that “Arkadiy Gukasyan will take part in
the cultural events in France dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the
establishment of truce in the zone of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict”.
The cultural programme is organized on the initiative of the Armenian
Union of France “In support of Karabakh” and with the assistance of
the coordination committee of the Armenian organizations of France. The
NKR president will visit Paris, Marseilles and Nice.
It is expected that during the visit Arkadiy Gukasyan will meet the
French cochairman of the OSCE Minsk Group for the settlement of the
Nagornyy Karabakh problem, Henry Jacolin, and representatives of the
Armenian community of this country.