Category: News

Armenia opposition turns down dialogue with ruling majority
ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 14 2004
YEREVAN, May 14 (Itar-Tass) — The Armenian opposition has refused
to hold the dialogue with the ruling parliamentary majority.
The propresidential coalition in turn did not want to use the word
crisis to describe the situation in the country after the last year’s
presidential elections.
The coalition also has proposed to the opposition joining the lawmaking
process, in particular taking part in debate of changes to the election
code and the constitution.
“The coalition is thus is trying to create an imitation of the return
of the opposition to the parliament,” a member of the oppositionist
parliamentary faction Justice, Shavarsh Kocharyan, said.
The opposition warned that it would not resume the dialogue until
all of its activists are freed from detention prisons.

Russia PM meets Armenia president
ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 14 2004
MOSCOW, May 13 (Itar-Tass) – – Russia is ready to discuss all the
topics on the agenda of Russia-Armenian relations, Russian Prime
Minister Mikhail Fradkov said, opening a meeting with Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan. “Our relations are developing in all
directions,” he said.
The Armenian president arrived in Moscow for a three-day working
visit. “A discussion of issues of bilateral relations from the
point of view of the implementation of the agreements reached
at Russian-Armenian summit meetings and determination of new
possibilities of deepening cooperation will be in the focus of
attention of Russian-Armenian talks,” a highly placed source in the
Kremlin administration told Itar-Tass.
According to the source, in particular, the sides are to “consider
ways of strengthening economic relations, issues of interaction in the
field of energy, transport, investments, and real sector of economy
where Russian interests are weightily represented in the fiscal sphere
and key industries.”

PICKET WILL CONTINUE NEAR OFFICE OF PROSECUTOR
A1 Plus | 21:17:48 | 14-05-2004 | Social |
The members of “Civil Will For and Against” social organizations
informed during a press conference as a result of the forum of 80
social organizations on May 11 working groups were set, which will work
in legislative sphere, civil society, and information and distribution.
Forum participants have decided to hold pickets every morning near
the building of General Office of Prosecutor protesting against the
unfair justice system.
Isabella Sargssyan, member of Armenian Committee of “Helsinki Citizens
Assembly”, says they will keep protesting as long as there political
prisoners in Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Mine risk to be taught in schools
by Zulfugar Agayev (Staff Writer)
Baku Sun, Azerbaijan
May 14 2004
Nazim Ismailov, director of ANAMA,
explains details of the Mine
Risk Education Project.
(Sun photo by Jeyhun Abdulla)font>
BAKU — Secondary school students in Azerbaijan’s frontline districts
are going to have special classes on landmines and unexploded
ordnance (UXO) starting this fall under an agreement signed Tuesday
by the Ministry of Education, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
and the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA).
The agreement gave the go ahead for the Mine Risk Education Project,
which a top ANAMA official says considers the inclusion of mine
education classes into the curriculum of secondary schools, a venture
the first of its kind in the world. The $70,000 UNICEF-funded project
is planned to continue for at least ten years.
“World practice has shown that it is almost impossible to completely
clear areas from landmines and other unexploded ordnance in a short
period,” says Nazim Ismailov, director of ANAMA. “It requires a long
time, which is why educating people about the risks of these kind of
dangerous explosives constitutes a priority now.”
Landmines, planted during and in the wake of 1991–94 Karabakh war
between Armenia and Azerbaijan, are posing a threat to the lives of
an estimated 514,000 Azeris living near the frontline, which
separates Azerbaijan from its occupied territories and also from
Armenia.
Armenian troops invaded Azerbaijan’s mainly ethnic-Armenian populated
region of Nagorno (Daghlig)-Karabakh and seven administrative
districts during the war, forcing over 700,000 civilians from their
homes. The territories remaining out of Baku’s control make up 20
percent of the nation’s total area.
Although no final solution has been found to the conflict in the ten
years following the cease-fire agreement signed in May 1994, ANAMA
has been engaged in clearing away the frontline areas from mines and
educating locals since 1998, when the organization was founded. The
agency is mainly funded by international donors whose subsidiaries
make up for 85 percent of its budget, with the Azerbaijani government
covering the remaining funds.
Ismailov says that a group of ANAMA experts have been working for the
past three years to educate people in frontline districts about the
risks of unexploded mines. However, he explains, since their work is
not systematic, it hasn’t been giving the desired results. According
to ANAMA, the number of those killed and injured by landmines and
other UXO keeps growing every year. For example, 14 civilians died
and another 14 were injured by mine blasts in 2003. Landmines took
the lives of six people and maimed another six during the first five
months of this year. Mostly middle-aged people are affected by mines,
with children constituting 16 percent of the victims.
ANAMA’s press officer, Shirin Rzayeva, said that a total of 1,274
Azerbaijanis fell victim to mines and other UXO from 1990 to 1
January 2004. Approximately 75 percent of them were injured and 25
percent died, she added.
According to the Mine Risk Education Project, ANAMA along with the
Ministry of Education plans to select and train 500 instructors
during August and September. The instructors will then be sent to
secondary schools in frontline districts to teach schoolchildren.
“Mine education is really a serious task,” says Ismailov. “You have
to talk to children in one way and to adults in a completely
different one.”
Ismailov said that a joint group of experts from ANAMA and the
Ministry of Education are working out methods to best present the
classes to students. They are planning to use special films and also
hold different competitions among the students in order to increase
their interest in the classes, he added.
Ismailov added that fatal mine incidents indicate that people living
in high-risk areas near the frontline do not seriously heed the mine
warning signs that have been set up.
“They tend to ignore the signs, saying that if something is going to
happen to them, nothing can prevent it as it will be a part of their
destiny. But they have to realize one thing; you may walk near a
landmine a hundred times without hitting it, but you will certainly
walk on the mine one time if you keep using that area.”
Ismailov says that cleaning areas from landmines is a very costly
job. In Azerbaijan, it costs $1 to clear one square meter area, and
the cost is even higher in other countries, he adds.
Last year ANAMA cleared over 3 million square meters of area from
mines. The agency is planning to clean 7 million square meters this
year.
Taking into account the mentioned figures, Ismailov seems optimistic
that the territories under Armenian occupation will be easily cleared
from mines after a final settlement is found to the conflict.
He says there are some 350,000-500,000 square meters of area that
needs to be cleared from an estimated 50,000-100,000 landmines in the
occupied territories.
These are mainly the frontline areas that now separate the two troops
and also some strategic places, such as water wells, bridges, etc, he
says.
The only problem is that, as the ANAMA director explains, since there
were no regular armies on either side of the conflict during the
early stages of war, it will be difficult to find maps of mined areas
if the maps exist at all.

Hearts of Darkness
By Richard Broderick
Minnesota Magazine (May-June issue)
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
;SEC={93B65015-7C3D-48FB-8718-AEBD88DE3D94}
Sabina Zimering is not what most would consider a commanding presence.
These days, the life of the white-haired, soft-spoken retiree quietly
revolves around her children and grandchildren.
But there is more to Zimering than meets the eye. Milan Kundera once
said that the history of the modern world is the story of the struggle
of memory against forgetting. Zimering, a Polish Jew, is both witness
to that struggle and living proof that, at least some of the time,
memory triumphs.
This spring, the Great American History Theatre produced the world
premiere of Hiding in the Open, an adaptation of Zimering’s memoir of
the same name. Opening to rapturous praise from critics and audiences
alike, the script tells the improbable story of how Zimering and her
younger sister managed to escape the Holocaust by posing as Catholics—a
feat made possible by the fact that, in prewar
Poland, all public school students were required to study Catholicism.
Escaping from the ghetto in their hometown of Piotrkow the very night
the Nazis moved in to deport all the Jews to the death camps, Zimering
and her sister made their way to Germany itself, where they managed to
survive as “volunteer” laborers right in the heart of Hitler’s Reich.
While her book and the play adapted from it tell her story through
print and performance, Zimering travels to schools, community centers,
colleges, retirement homes, and elsewhere, relating her harrowing
tale of deception and survival. Speaking recently to gatherings at an
alternative high school at Dakota Technical College and at Hill-Murray
High School, she received what one observer describes as “overwhelming
response” with “awestruck” students glued to their seats and school
officials thrilled to see their charges so raptly attentive. In
response to her appearance, the principal at the alternative high
school has gone so far as to arrange a field trip next fall to
Washington, D.C., which will include a visit to the Holocaust Museum.
“This is a completely new world for me, but very rewarding,” says
Zimering, who, after emigrating to the United States, spent much of her
career as an ophthalmologist working with student health services at
the University. She confesses that she was unable to talk about her
experiences to anyone for a long time after the war ended—although
she survived, other family members and virtually everyone she’d known
growing up did not. Now, though, she realizes that what she has to
say is not rewarding only for her.
“To high school students, the history of 50 or 60 years ago is not
much different from 600 years ago,” she says. “But when a survivor
comes and tells their story, it’s completely different. It makes an
impact for a person to come that they can see and talk to.”
Zimering’s visits to high schools and college classrooms are arranged
through the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies (CHGS), a cross-disciplinary unit with a unique approach that
weaves together scholarship, community outreach, and art to explore
the darkest reaches of human experiences. This blend of scholarship,
storytelling, and art reflects the vision of the center’s director,
Stephen Feinstein, who came to the University from the University
of Wisconsin-River Falls, where he’d been the chair of the history
department.
Founded in 1997 with money from an anonymous donor, CHGS offers a
wide-ranging curriculum of classes on the Holocaust as well as the
genocides in Turkey, East Asia, Central Africa, the former Yugoslavia,
and elsewhere. But its reach is much broader than that—amazingly so,
given the center’s brief history. It also sponsors major art exhibits,
such as “Coexistence,” a traveling exhibition of poster art initiated
by Jerusalem’s Museum on the Seam (see page 34); brings Holocaust
survivors like Zimering to the community (her memoir was also
the subject of a class taught at the CHGS); conducts conferences;
presents guest speakers like Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power,
author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide; and
offers training and curriculum materials for use in high schools and
middle schools. One of the center’s new offerings is six “teaching
trunks” containing books, videotapes, posters, and curriculum guides
loaned by the center to participating schools.
*
Instead of establishing a separate department, the University
decided to organize its new program as a center located within the
History Department, an arrangement that, Feinstein explains, avoids
the possibility of overspecialization. Although small—the center’s
faculty consists of Feinstein and a handful of adjunct professors—the
goal of the center is, he says, “to think out of the box about how
we create programs that are of interest to scholars and the public,
to engage in research, and to gain prominence for the University by
having an active public dimension in this area.”
>>From the beginning, the center has drawn extensively from the
Twin Cities’ unusually large number of Holocaust survivors—about
150 individuals in all when the center opened its doors seven years
ago. But its growing renown in the field of Holocaust and genocide
studies owes a lot to Feinstein’s enthusiasm for scholarship that
examines and compares characteristics common to all episodes of
genocide (to some, the Holocaust is seen as a unique event, standing
outside of history) and his determination to weave the arts—literary,
visual, and cinematic—into the mix of offerings.
“You could have a center like this without including art, but
it wouldn’t be complete,” argues Feinstein, who has a background
in art history and has studied the underground art of the Soviet
Union. “There are people out there who think only straight history
is worth studying—no literature or other works of imagination. There
are some who even think that survivor testimony is of no value.”
But art, he observes, adds multiple dimensions critical to coming to
grips, if that is possible, with the worst of human behavior. Among
the millions killed by the Nazis—as well as the millions killed by the
Turks, the Khmer Rouge, and the Hutu—were musicians and artists and
writers and filmmakers as well as “ordinary” people. Just as important,
art—even mediocre art—has the power to engage a much wider audience
than scholarship ever could. “Schindler’s List is not the best movie
about the Holocaust, but it got the message out to millions of people,”
Feinstein says. “More than I could possibly reach.”
“The fact that the center is initiating bringing the ‘Coexistence’
exhibit to the Twin Cities is a testimony to what Steve’s perspective
enables him to add to this community,” says Rabbi Joseph Edelheit, the
director of St. Cloud State’s court-mandated Jewish studies program and
creator of the CHGS’s class in post-Holocaust theology. “My experience
with other institutions that offer Holocaust studies makes it clear to
me that this center is unique. Steve’s an internationally recognized
art historian. He’s not bringing untested theories to his role. His
maturity allows him to provide the center with seasoned leadership.”
Like other faculty associated with the center, Edelheit was drawn to
CHGS through his personal connections to Feinstein but has remained
involved with the center because of Feinstein’s demonstrated
willingness to think “outside the box.” When Feinstein invited
Edelheit to teach at the center, Edelheit responded that the only
class he wanted to teach would deal with theology.
“I asked, ‘Is that a problem at a public university?'” Edelheit
recalls. Feinstein assured him it was not, so Edelheit, who counts
27 members of his extended family lost to Hitler’s diabolism and has
the distinction of having been the first rabbi to earn a doctorate
in Christian theology, created a course in post-Holocaust theology,
which includes the works of both Christian and Jewish thinkers.
“I go into this class not with merely my academic credentials,
but more passionately my rabbinical credentials and my desire to
create interfaith dialogue,” Edelheit says. “My goal is to model the
commitment to dialogue.”
The center’s willingness to break new ground is also what brought
Patricia Baer, a professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus in
St. Peter, Minnesota, to the University in 2001 to teach a course
titled “Women in the Holocaust: Gender, Memory, Representation.”
As with other instructors working with the center, Baer has found
that her class draws a broad variety of students, attracting both
undergraduate and graduate students from Jewish studies and women’s
studies, but also history, education, nursing, political science,
Spanish, and art, as well as members of the broader community—including
a student who works with a shelter for battered women. Baer’s classes
have included both Christians and Jews. What’s more, each time she’s
taught the course, Baer reports, she’s also had students from Germany
enrolled.
“That’s made for an interesting dimension to our discussions,”
she says. “For Jewish students, I think many times they have had a
member of their family who is a survivor or know of family members who
died and now have a particular interest in how these events affected
women. International students often want to know how Americans look
at this event and how that view differs from what they are taught in
a place like Germany.
“Stephen is really quite extraordinary in his foresight,” she says. “At
the time I first offered this course, there were only five or six
similar courses in the United States. Holocaust studies have been slow
to embrace the insights of feminist studies. There are complicated
reasons for that, like the hegemony male historians have had in the
field who often feel that a feminist approach trivializes the issue.”
Some scholars and survivors, she says, also feel that a focus on gender
issues threatens to minimize “the racial basis for the Holocaust.”
Meanwhile, for Taner Akcam, a visiting history professor who teaches
courses on the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915 and the
rise of nationalism in the Middle East, it is precisely the center’s
willingness to compare acts of genocide that constitutes one of its
principal values.
“This is something that has been lacking,” says Akcam, an ethnic Turk
who was the subject of a recent New York Times article detailing the
outrage his work on the Armenian genocide has elicited from the Turkish
government, which continues to deny any such event took place. “For the
most part each genocide scholar deals with his or her own specialty.
This helps bring us out of the shadows.”
*
The term crimes against humanity first appeared only in 1915 in
response to the Turkish killing of Armenians and the then-novel German
policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, and the word genocide, which
specifically refers to the intentional mass killing of a particular
people or ethnic group, was not coined until 1943 (by Rafael Lemkin,
a Polish Jewish lawyer). But genocide, along with the invention
of weapons of mass destruction, could be considered the signature
experience of the past 100 years of human history.
But why should this be so? What is it about global conditions that
made the 20th, and now, it seems all but certain, the 21st century,
an epoch so rife with a lust for extermination?
Not surprisingly, there aren’t any easy answers. But if one examines
the mass killings of the recent past, as the scholars and students
at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies do, certain patterns
begin to appear, not so much in the modus operandi of the killings—gas
chambers in the Reich, machetes in Rwanda—but in the ethnic, national,
and international circumstances that militate in favor of genocide. The
conclusions that can be drawn from this study are not hopeful: The same
toxic mix of forces that triggered the murder of more than a million
Armenians nearly a century ago are still at large in the global arena.
“In order to understand the killing of the Armenians, you have to
understand the emergence of the different nations within the context
of the demise of the Ottoman Empire,” explains Akcam. “The idea of
the nation state is a very homogenous group living within a defined
territory. In a polyglot empire like the Ottoman Empire, where 10
different ethnic groups might be living together in the same village,
the rise of nationalism created hostility and the basis of ethnic
cleansing.”
Similar forces were at work, Akcam points out, in the former
Yugoslavian Republic when it was disintegrating during the period
following Tito’s death, in the Kashmir and large swaths of Africa
and East Asia as well, all but ensuring future outbreaks of genocide.
The rise of Hitler, it should be added, took place against a backdrop
of what Feinstein calls “a template” of the collapsing empire/rising
nationalism scenario described by his colleague Akcam. Fueling the
downward spiral into genocide was a mix of pseudo-scientific theories
about “race” and a fundamental misapprehension of Darwin’s survival
of the fittest—and its deadly misapplication to human beings.
The fact that similar forces, from the post-colonial hangover
that continues to afflict much of the Middle East to the rise of
fundamentalism as a 21st-century version of extreme nationalistic
or racial ideologies, are still at work in the world today makes
the work of the center all that more relevant—and urgent. Memory’s
struggle against forgetting goes on.
“We need to be talking about how to prevent genocide from happening
in the future,” says Feinstein. “We need to create an early warning
system to predict the outbreak of these kinds of events that doesn’t
trample on national sovereignty.
“That’s one issue,” he continues. “The other issue is that we must
study these events as a facet of humanity on the presumption that,
by doing so, we can learn something from it.” n
Richard Broderick is a St. Paul freelance writer.

Russian and Armenian leaders discuss Caucuses problems
RosBusinessConsulting, Russia
May 14 2004
RBC, 14.05.2004, Moscow 14:53:31.In the course of their meeting,
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian President Robert
Kocharian focused on the situation in the Caucuses and the settlement
of the Nagorny Karabakh (Azerbaijan) conflict between Armenia and
Azerbaijan. In addition, the sides considered cooperation in fighting
international terrorism and ensuring stability in the Caucuses
region. Putin and Kocharian also discussed measures to develop trade
and economic relations between the two states, Rossiya (Russia)
television reported.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Charles Aznavour made commander of Legion of Honour
Expatica, Netherlands
May 14 2004
PARIS, May 14 (AFP) – Charles Aznavour, the 80 year-old French singer
of Armenian origin, was on Friday made a commander of the Legion of
Honour by President Jacques Chirac.
“Among the 1,000 songs you have written and composed more than 100
are in the pages of the anthologies,” Chirac said in a ceremony at
the Elysee palace.
“It is to a man of infinite generosity, sincere, an incomparable
and uncontested artist, a marvellous ambassador for French song
and language that I am profoundly delighted to present this award,”
he said.
There are some 1,250 commanders of the Legion of Honour, the order’s
third highest rank.

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan State Info Agency
May 14 2004
FOREIGN MINISTER PARTICIPATES COE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS 114TH
SESSION
[May 14, 2004, 16:16:38]
A delegation of Azerbaijan led by Minister of Foreign Affairs of
Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov took part in the 114th session of the
Council of Europe Committee of ministers held in Strasbourg on May
12-13.
Prior to the session, Minister E. Mammadyarov met with COE Secretary
General Walter Schwimmer. During the meeting, the Minister signed a
protocol on changes in anti-terror Convention of 1977, the parties
discussed fulfillment by Azerbaijan of its commitments to the Council
of Europe and continuation of CE’s assistance to the country in this
sphere. The Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan updated the COE Secretary
General in detail on the activity aimed at settlement of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.
The Minister further met with members of the Committee Minister’s Ago
monitoring group to discuss Azerbaijan’s fulfillment of the
commitments to COE, measures taken in country for implementing
democratic reforms, and perspectives of the Armenia-Azerbaijan
conflict resolution. Pointing to the positive results of Azerbaijan
President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to the Council of Europe, the Minister
emphasized the importance of Azerbaijan’s cooperation with the
organization.
In accordance with the session’s first day agenda, Minister of
Foreign Affairs Elmar Mammadyarov delivered a report on political
issues and reformation of the European Court on Human Rights. On the
point “current political issues”, he stressed the importance of the
Council of Europe in creation of the United Europe without
borderlines, expressed Azerbaijan’s position towards this process.
The Minister also touched upon the bitter consequences of the
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict hampering development of South Caucasus
region, initiatives put forward by Azerbaijan for elimination of
these problems. He also drew the meeting participants attention to
the exceptional role of the European Human Rights Court in protection
of human rights and freedoms, and stated that Azerbaijani supports
the new 14th protocol of the European Human Rights Convention aimed
at reformation of the Court and improvement of its efficiency.
Later on the same day, Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenian
held meeting in presence of the OSCE Minsk group co-Chairs at the
office of he permanent representation of France to the Council of
Europe.
On the 13th of May, the 114th session of the Committee of Minister
continued its work. During the meeting presided by new Chairman of
the Committee Jan Petersen, Minister Elmar Mammadyarov supported the
idea of conducting 3rd Summit of the Council of Europe underlining
the importance if inclusion of topical issues, particularly that of
conflicts settlement, in its agenda. He noted that consequences of
the conflicts have a negative impact upon realization of the European
values in developing countries.
Speaking of the combat against terrorism, Mr. Mammadyarov stated that
he supports COE related efforts, particularly, preparation of the
general anti-terror convention, told of the terrorist acts committed
by Armenia against Azerbaijan and their bitter consequences, and
emphasized the need to intensify the combat against aggressive
separatism. The Minister, however, noted that Azerbaijan attaches
great importance to the values common to all mankind and dialogue
between cultures.
In conclusion of the session, the Foreign Ministers of the COE member
state adopted final official statement of the 114th session, and
Statement on advanced experience in the sphere of elections to the
effect that the unsolved conflicts pose threat to security,
territorial integrity and stability in the member countries, and pike
fear into their populations.
Another document adopted by the Ministers and concerning the results
of the Committee Minister’s Chairman says that the Committee welcomes
the three Azerbaijan President’s decrees on pardon, and supports
continuation of the way of national reconciliation and democratic
reforms.
It also welcomes the fact of continuation – parallel with the session
of – of the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan under the
trusteeship of the OSCE Minsk Group, and reminds the commitments to
the Council of Europe assumed by both countries in entry.
On the same day, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with PACE
rapporteur on Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict Terry Davis to exchange
views on the current situation.
Beside, COE Secretary General Walter Schwimmer held a meeting with
Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia to discuss the
fulfillment of obligations on the conflict’s resolution assumed by
the member states, and the relevant contribution of the Council of
Europe.
On the same day, Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia met in
presence of the Minsk group co-Chairs at the office of he permanent
representation of France to the Council of Europe.
Minister Elmar Mammadyarov had a separate meeting with the co-Chairs
as well.

MARDIN HOSTS ABRAHAMIC RELIGION AND PEACE SYMPOSIUM
Cumhuriyet, Turkey
May 14 2004
Mardin yesterday hosted a seminar on “Religion and Peace in Light
of the Prophet Abraham” organized by the Intercultural Dialogue
Platform. Among those attending were Interior Minister Abdulkadir
Aksu, Fener Greek Patriarch Bartholomeos, Istanbul Chief Rabbi Ishak
(Yitzhak) Haleva, Eastern Orthodox Cardinal Ignace Moussa Daoud,
Turkish Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II and Religious Affairs Directorate
deputy head Muhammed Sevki Aydin. The symposium started with the Muslim
call to prayer and continued with hymns sung by a chorus with Muslim,
Jewish and Christian members. /Cumhuriyet/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenia’s FM terms Iran as a major regional partner
IRNA, Iran
May 14 2004
Moscow, May 14, IRNA — Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan in
a meeting with Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh in Yerevan Friday
referred to Iran as a major partner of his country in the region.
In the meeting, Oskanyan said that the agreement signed between
the two countries on sale of gas to Armenia is in line with Iran’s
political will to expand the mutual friendly ties.
He further underlined Iran’s decisive role and stance in the region.
Turning to the significance of Iran’s balanced regional policy, he said
that bilateral cooperation under the framework of North-South Route
and construction of Iran-Armenia gas pipeline are of great importance.
For his part, Zanganeh expressed pleasure over the finalization of
the contract on transfer of gas from Iran to Armenia on the basis of
exchange with power as a major development.
The minister noted that the materialization of the project marks
sustained and long-term collaboration between Iran and Armenia.
Referring to the pace of the global economic growth, he reiterated
the need for economic development in Caucasus, in particular in the
coming years.
On the first day of his visit to Armenia on Thursday, Zanganeh met
President Robert Koucharian, prime minister, energy minister, head
of presidential institution and the Armenian chairman of Iran-Armenia
Economic Commission and discussed matters of mutual concern.
The two sides signed an agreement on transfer of gas from Iran to
Armenia and a memorandum of understanding on collaboration in the
field of energy on Thursday.