RIA OREANDA
Economic News
October 26, 2006 Thursday
RUSAL Opens the ARMENAL Plant after Large-Scale Modernization
Yerevan. OREANDA-NEWS. RUSAL, the world’s third largest aluminium
producer, has announced the opening of one of the most advanced foil
mills in the world, “RUSAL ARMENAL” in Armenia after extensive
modernization. Total investment into the project has exceeded $70
million.
The tender for the modernization of the plant was won by German firm
Achenbah who started the programme in 2004 and completed it in a
record period of 23 months. The modernization programme included the
installation of supercasters, which are continuous casting and
rolling units.
The programme developed a non-waste process cycle, abandoned the use
of ingots, improved the quality of products and cut expenses
significantly. The preparatory rolling mill has also been fully
modernized and is now equipped with monitoring tools and a process
control system.
Modern environment-protection and labour safety systems have been
implemented at the plant. In particular, the process of lubricant
steam collection removal and condensation system has been updated,
modern fire-fighting equipment has been installed and a complex fire
alarm system has been introduced. RUSAL Armenal will produce 25,000
tonnes of foil per year, of which 18,000 tonnes will be a thin 6-9
micron foil, which is the most popular product in Russia and abroad.
The plant is expected to operate at full capacity in mid-2007 and
become one of the major aluminium foil producers in the region. The
plant’s share in the total volume of foil products in the CIS will
amount to 12% and its main sales markets will be Europe and USA.
ARMENAL is the only aluminium foil production facility in the
Caucasus and Central Asia and has already received enough orders to
operate at full capacity. RUSAL is considering an opportunity to
expand the plant’s production capacity up to 40,000 tonnes of product
per year.
The “RUSAL ARMENAL” foil mill was established in Yerevan in May 2000
on the basis of the Kanakersk Aluminium Smelter and is one of the
largest manufacturing enterprises in Armenia. It was acquired by
RUSAL in 2000. Together with the “RUSAL SAYANAL” plant (The Republic
of Khakassia) it forms the packaging division of the Company. It is
certified according to the quality management system international
standard ISO 9001.

European Report
October 26, 2006
ROMANIAN COMMISSIONER NAMED
The future Romanian commissioner has been officially announced: the
liberal Senator Varujan Vosganian has been nominated for the post.
This information was made public in Bucharest on 25 October by the
Romanian Prime Minister, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, during a meeting
with his government. Vosganian is 48 years old, of Armenian origin
and with a generally economic profile. Bulgaria has not yet made an
official decision, although a national radio source has confirmed
that Meglena Kuneva, the Bulgarian minister for European integration,
is the favourite. Once the Bulgarian candidate has been named, the
next step will be a hearing of the two candidates at the European
Parliament during its plenary session in Strasbourg from 27 to 30
November.

The Independent (London)
October 26, 2006 Thursday
First Edition
FERNANDO GASPARIAN; Publisher and industrialist
by Hugh O’Shaughnessy
The industrialist Fernando Gasparian was a defender of democracy and
the most distinguished publisher Brazil produced in the late 20th
century.
He was born in 1930 to parents of Armenian extraction and to the
considerable prosperity the family textile business ensured. After
studying engineering, he and his friends Rubens Paiva (who became a
federal deputy and was later assassinated by the military), Almino
Afonso and Marcos Pereira took over the periodical Jornal de Debates
in 1953. It pursued a Brazil-centred line opposing much foreign
investment and the privatisation of the state oil company Petrobras.
Early in 1964 Gasparian bought America Textil, a substantial Rio de
Janeiro textile company, which had got into difficulties and was
being supported by the Banco do Brasil. After the US-supported
military putsch against the civilian government of President João
Goulart later that year, he was a target for the new dictatorship as
a founder of the opposition Brazilian Democratic Movement, the MDB.
The military cut off bank funding for his company. After the
dictatorship lurched further to the right in 1969 Gasparian found it
politic to leave Brazil, for exile, eventually finding a teaching
post at St Antony’s College, Oxford.
He returned to Brazil in 1972 to found Opinião, a hard-hitting
magazine which upset the dictatorship, also acquiring
thepublishinghousePazeTerra.Overthe years this became a powerhouse of
political and social thought and liberation theology. Alceu Amoroso
Lima, Celso Furtado, Helio Jaguaribe, Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
Octavio Paz, Torcuato di Tella, Alain Touraine, Brian Van Arkadie,
Dudley Seers and Paulo Freire were among the imprint’s authors.
Gasparian returned to Oxford for a few months in 1973 before going
home tolaunchthemonthly CadernosdeOpinião. Its second number enraged
the military by carrying the text of a lecture by Hélder Cmara, the
irrepressible archbishop of Olinda and Recife. Gasparian was charged
with offences against “national security” by a regime which was
obsessed by that slippery concept. In the event he was acquitted.
Unabashed, the dictatorship had a bomb placed in his editorial
offices in 1976.
When dictatorship gave way to constitutional government Gasparian
devot-edmoretimetopolitics,in1985becomin g treasurer for the campaign
of his friend Fernando Henrique Cardoso forthemayoralty of São Paulo.
In 1986 he was elected to the constituent assembly framing a new
constitution, on which he served until 1988. There he pushed for a
limit of 12 per cent on bank lending rates, financial support for
agrarian reform, limitationson foreign investment in mining and a ban
on capital punishment.
>From 1993 to 1995 he was active in the Latin American Parliament. He
was increasingly at odds with Cardoso after the
latterwonthepresidencyandin1995publicly criticised what he saw as
Cardoso’s excessive reliance on foreign banks attracted to Brazil by
high interest rates.
Talking to Fernando Gasparian last month, I found him as eager for
new projects and ideas as when I first met him in 1970. With his
death, comments Bernardo Kucinski, “it can be said that a generation
of patriotic businessmen committed to a scheme of national
development has become extinct”.
Fernando Gasparian, industrialist and publisher: born São Paulo,
Brazil 27 January 1930; married (three sons, one daughter); died São
Paulo 7 October 2006.

The Irish Times
October 26, 2006 Thursday
Enthusiasm for EU now collapsing in Turkey
by Jamie Smyth in Brussels
EU: Support for joining the EU in Turkey has collapsed amid growing
public disillusionment over the slow pace of accession talks with
Brussels.
Less than a third of Turks, some 32.2 per cent, now think Turkey must
join the union, according to a survey carried out by pollsters A&G
and published in Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper yesterday. A similar
poll last year found 57.4 per cent of people thought Turkey “must
certainly enter the EU”. In 2004 the figure was 67.5 per cent.
The opinion poll comes at a sensitive time for EU-Turkey relations as
Brussels pushes hard for more political and legal reform ahead of a
crucial monitoring report on Turkey to be published on November 8th.
Ankara also faces pressure to open its ports and airports to vessels
from Cyprus.
A quarter of the 2,408 people surveyed in the poll said Turkey
“should certainly not enter the EU”, a steep rise on the 10.3 per
cent who felt that way last year, when Ankara began accession talks.
The poll, undertaken in late September, also showed 76.5 per cent of
Turks expect tougher conditions to be imposed on them by Brussels in
the future, while only 7.2 per cent now trust the EU.
Political analysts speculated that the poll results could make it
tougher for prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a general
election in November 2007, to push through unpopular reforms demanded
by the EU.
The slump in Turkish support for accession follows criticism by
Brussels of Ankara’s reform programme, particularly its failure to
boost freedom of expression.
This month Turkish attitudes to the EU were further soured when
French parliamentarians introduced a Bill making it a crime to deny,
as Ankara does, that Ottoman Turks carried out a genocide against
Armenians in 1915.

Prime-Tass English-language Business Newswire
October 26, 2006 Thursday 1:58 PM EET
RusAl re-launches foil plant in Armenia after $70 mln upgrade
Russia’s largest aluminum producer RusAl has put its foil production
plant in Armenia, RusAl Armenal, back into operation after completing
extensive modernization at a cost of U.S. $70 million, the company
said in a press release Thursday.
Germany’s Achenbach acted as a general contractor for the
modernization project, which started in 2004 and took 23 months to
complete, the company said.
The modernization program has improved the quality of products
produced at the plant and cut expenses significantly. The plant’s
preparatory rolling mill has also been fully modernized and is now
equipped with monitoring tools and a process control system, the
company said.
RusAl Armenal will produce 25,000 tonnes of foil per year, the
company said. In 2003 the plant produced 10,500 tonnes of foil.
The plant is expected to operate at full capacity in mid-2007 and
become one of the major aluminum foil producers in the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS), RusAl said.
RusAl said that the plant’s share in the total volume of foil
production in the CIS would amount to 12% and its main sales markets
would be Europe and the U.S.
Armenal is the only aluminum foil production facility in the Caucasus
and Central Asia and has already received enough orders to operate at
full capacity. RusAl is considering the possibility of expanding the
plant’s production capacity up to 40,000 tonnes of products per year,
the company said.
RusAl, which is the third largest aluminum producer in the world,
accounts for 75% of Russia’s primary aluminum output and 10% of the
global primary aluminum production. In 2005 the holding’s output
totaled 2.714 million tonnes, 1.6% up on the year.

Interfax News Agency, Russia
Oct 26 2006
PUTIN ENDORSES RATIFICATION OF AGREEMENT WITH GEORGIA ON MILITARY TRANSIT
Moscow, 26 October: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law
“On the ratification of the agreement between the Russian Federation
and Georgia on organizing the transit of military cargo and personnel
through the territory of Georgia,” the Kremlin press service reported
on Thursday [26 October].
The agreement was signed on 31 March 2006 in Sochi. It is aimed at
international legal regulation of issues concerning the transit by
various means of transport through the territory of Georgia of
military cargo and personnel in order to ensure the functioning of
the Russian military base located in Armenia.

TREND, Azerbaijan
Oct 26 2006
AZERI DIPLOMAT HAILS ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER’S STATEMENT
Baku, 26 October: The latest statement by Armenian Foreign Minister
Vardan Oskanyan about the return of all occupied Azerbaijani lands is
very positive, the head of the press and information policy
department of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, Tahir Tagizada, has
told Trend.
He believes that the inevitability of the Azerbaijani territories
being returned within the framework of the settlement process is a
fact for Armenia. “The Armenian foreign minister has clearly said
that Armenia understands that the return of all occupied territories
of the Azerbaijani Republic is an inevitable element of the
settlement along with the return of displaced persons to their
homes,” Tagizada said.

AFX International Focus
October 26, 2006 Thursday 1:14 PM GMT
Credit Agricole to take 28 pct stake in Armenia’s ACBA
PARIS (AFX) – Credit Agricole SA plans to acquire a 28 pct stake in
the ACBA bank of Armenia, the latest step of its expansion plan for
Central and Eastern Europe, said Yves Couturier, general secretary of
Credit Agricole’s controlling shareholder FNCA.
Speaking at the FNCA’s annual conference in Dijon, Couturier said
ACBA ‘is the head of a cooperative farming bank that we helped found
in the early 1990s.’
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but Couturier said
the FNCA would take a direct stake in ACBA alongside Credit Agricole
SA, via a new holding company called Sacam International.
Couturier said the FNCA federation of regional banks will take
minority stakes in all future Credit Agricole acquisitions.
It is taking a 10 pct stake in a network of 654 Italian retail
banking branches acquired by Credit Agricole from Banca Intesa
earlier this month, and has a 5 pct stake in Emporiki, the Greek bank
that was taken over by Credit Agricole in August.

The Calgary Herald (Alberta)
October 26, 2006 Thursday
Final Edition
Motive is key in terror law: Ruling would view terrorists much like
common criminals
To try to understand 9/11 without acknowledging that the attackers
were driven by extreme religious fervour would be absurd. Yet, that’s
what the Ontario Superior Court would have Canadian courts do, as
they consider the first charge under the act.
On Monday, Judge Douglas Rutherford ruled in the case of accused
terrorist Momin Khawaja that the federal Anti-terrorism Act’s
definition of terrorism was unconstitutional, an affront to freedom
“of religion, thought, belief, opinion, expression and association,”
to “democratic life” itself.
Critics of the act — actually a package of amendments to the
Criminal Code and other federal legislation — say Rutherford was
right.
They say the amendments, Ottawa’s effort to placate a U.S.
administration that questioned Canadian efforts at internal security,
gave government potentially dangerous powers at the expense of civil
liberties.
Yet, if Rutherford fully understood the nature of terrorism in
Canada, he might not have so quickly downgraded it to common
criminality.
The Antiterrorism Act defined terrorism as an attempt to intimidate a
group involving a major act of violence, with a religious, political
or ideological motive.
Rutherford struck the last requirement, reasoning that examining
motives posed a threat to charter freedoms and could lead to ethnic
profiling.
Removing the definition of motive is a significant alteration.
Some commentators argue that, relieved of the need to prove motive,
prosecutors will more easily secure convictions. To some degree that
may be true, although aspiring martyrs — usually quick to proclaim
their faith — seldom place much burden of proof on prosecutors.
What’s troubling is that, absent religious or ideological
inspiration, terrorism is diminished in the eyes of the law. Thus,
July’s alleged plot to bomb the CSIS headquarters becomes classed
with the kind of industrial sabotage that killed nine Yellowknife
miners during a 1992 labour dispute, or the mayhem of Quebec’s biker
wars.
Treating it as just another criminal act may comfort Canadians whose
response to terror is denial, but it’s no guide to dealing with it.
The difference is crucial. A strategy to confront criminals seeking
profit from society can afford to deal with events after they happen.
Once a gang is busted, the players are off the board.
Terrorists, however, have much broader ambitions, often seeking to
destroy society. Thus, preventing their acts becomes much more
critical.
Arrests and convictions of a few adherents to a cause do not
eliminate the enemy.
With yet no attack on home soil, many Canadians are tempted to
consider terrorism somebody else’s problem.
They should not be so blase, because we are far from immune.
Just ask the 391 victims of Air India Flight 182, whose plane was
bombed in 1985 by Sikh extremists.
Or Hezbollah, and the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, both of which raise
funds aggressively here, and otherwise abuse Canadian hospitality to
pursue wars elsewhere.
Even Armenian exiles have organized here, and murdered Canadians.
And let us not forget Canada once had its own, homegrown terrorists
— the ideologically driven FLQ — nor that Canadian troops in
Afghanistan are not fighting agricultural reformers, but people who
would turn that country into a base for terrorists.
Canada needs a strong anti-terrorism law, not legislation that treats
terrorism as merely a tiresome distraction from the blood sport of
minority government politics.
Ottawa must appeal.

Associated Press Worldstream
October 26, 2006 Thursday 4:03 PM GMT
Kuneva accepted as Bulgaria’s first EU commissioner; Romania
nominates liberal senator
By PAUL AMES, Associated Press Writer
The European Commission welcomed Bulgaria’s Meglena Kuneva as her
country’s first member of the EU’s executive body Thursday, clearing
her to assume the post in charge of consumer affairs on Jan. 1 if she
is approved by the European Parliament.
Bulgaria and Romania are due to join the European Union on New Year’s
Day, bringing EU membership to 27 nations.
The European Commission said in a statement that Kuneva, Bulgaria’s
European affairs minister, was accepted for the post, but
consultations were continuing on Romania’s nomination, Liberal party
Sen. Varujan Vosganian.
All EU members have the right to send an official to serve on the
European Commission, the bloc’s executive body. The European
Parliament is to vote on the appointments in December.
Kuneva is expected to assume the new post of consumer affairs
commissioner, taking responsibility for an area that previously fell
within the portfolio of EU Public Health Commissioner Markos
Kyprianou.
“I believe Mrs. Kuneva has all the political, personal and technical
competencies for this very important job,” said European Commission
President Jose Manuel Barroso.
Kuneva, 49, a lawyer and a former university teacher and journalist,
has led Bulgaria’s entry talks with the European Commission since
2001.
“Meglena Kuneva will be a worthy and efficient representative of
Bulgaria,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told reporters
in Sofia.
However, Vosganian’s nomination has raised doubts from the Socialist
faction in the European Parliament.
“The Bulgarian candidate is well known for her European attitudes and
political involvement, whereas the Romanian is unknown,” said a
statement from Hannes Swoboda and Jan Marinus Wiersma, vice
presidents of the Socialist group.
“What is known is that he has been very much on the right wing of
politics and on the payroll of big economic tycoons,” they added. “It
is clear that we will have to explore his European profile but also
his acceptance of European standards and European values.”
Vosganian, 48, chair of the Senate’s budget and finance committee, is
known for supporting free-market policies. He also is a fervent
backer of his country’s flat tax of 16 percent, which Romania
introduced in 2005 to replace a progressive taxation scheme ranging
from 18 to 40 percent.
A mathematician and economist, Vosganian also is a writer and poet.
An ethnic Armenian, he heads the National Union of (Ethnic) Armenians
in Romania.
The European Parliament will grill both candidates at hearings next
month and is due to vote on their appointments in December.
Although the vote by the EU assembly is not legally binding, the
commission has made clear that a negative vote would likely result in
Barroso asking them to resign.