ARMENIA SHOULD ELABORATE POLICY OF EVOLUTIONARY DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTHCARE SECTOR
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Oct 16 2006
YEREVAN, October 16. /ARKA/. Armenia should elaborate a policy of
evolutionary development of the healthcare sector, Deputy Minister
of Healthcare Tatul Hakobyan told students of the American University
of Armenia Saturday.
He said that the policy should be based on the analytics and monitoring
of the sector, as dynamic changes currently take place in the society.
“The policy should not be dogmatic, but flexible to respond to
developments in the society,” Hakobyan reported.
He pointed out that the policy should take the socioeconomic situation
and political developments in the country into account.
He also reported that the strategy in the healthcare sector should be
coordinated with other sectors that are related to heath, particularly
ecology, transport and water supply.

PUBLIC ADVOCATES UNION TO HOLD SEMINAR IN YEREVAN
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Oct 16 2006
YEREVAN, October 16. /ARKA/. Public Advocates Union is to hold a
seminar on Tuesday in Yerevan.
The union’s press office says the seminar aims to present programs
being implemented in provinces, to estimate the current situation
and to outline ways for problems solution.
Representatives of Armenian Public Utilities regulation Commission,
companies providing public utilities, NGOs and international
organizations are invited for the event.

MOSTLY ECONOMIC ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED AT SITTING OF ARMENIAN-RUSSIAN INTERPARLIAMENTARY COMMISSION
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Oct 16 2006
YEREVAN, October 16. /ARKA/. Mostly economic issues will be discussed
at the sitting of the Armenian-Russian parliamentary commission, Vahan
Hovhannisyan, vice-speaker and co-chair of the commission reported.
“The legislative basis for facilitating the activity of economic
entities and promoting entry to each other’s markets will be
discussed,” the vice-speaker said.
“There will be spokesmen from the executive power, particularly from
the ministries of transport and communication, and trade and economic
development,” Hovhannisyan reported.
Besides this, he said that the issue about putting the Armenian
enterprises, transferred to Russia against the debt, will be also
discussed.

INFLATION RATE TO JUMP TO 5% IN ARMENIA
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Oct 16 2006
YEREVAN, October 16. /ARKA/. The inflation rate, planned for 2006
in the state budget, will increase to 5%, Vardan Aramyan, head of
the department for foreign economic relations of the Central Bank of
Armenia reported at the hearings on the AMD exchange rate in 2005-2006,
organized by the Anti-criminal movement He said that the inflation has
been planned at the level up to 3% for 2006, but the abrupt reduction
of harvests in the agriculture resulted in decrease in supply and
price rise, particularly for potato by 40%.
“Taking into account the price rise on international markets, we cannot
oppose the inflation with our limited resources, and keeping it at
a lower level can jeopardize the country’s economy,” Aramyan said.
He reported that it is planned to amend the law and make the planned
level of inflation higher.
“Otherwise, the Central Bank would have to resort to more rigid
measures, and it is not ruled out that as a result, the AMD revaluation
would have turned deeper, but such measures are not reasonable in
the given situation, as the current inflation is ‘the inflation of
supply’,” Aramyan reported.
According to the Central Bank, the inflation will exceed the target
level of 3% at the end of 2006 (compared to December 2005). Such rise
of the inflation has occurred first of all due to the strengthening
external inflation pressures.
In particular, the risks include the high rate of world prices for
energy carriers and other goods (basic metals and granulated sugar)
that occurred during the year, and also the anticipated reduction of
grain-crops in Russia and Ukraine.
At the end of September 2006, the Armenian government approved the
proposal for amendments to the law “On State Budget of Armenia for
2006”, and suggested that the CBA take measures for keeping the
inflation in December 2006 at the level of 5% (+- 1.5%) compared to
the corresponding period of 2005.

TURKEY, FRANCE: ANKARA SEEKS FRENCH BUSINESSES’ HELP AGAINST ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL
Monday Morning, Lebanon
Oct 16 2006
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has asked French companies
to lobby French legislators against a parliamentary bill making it
an offense to deny that Armenians were the victims of genocide
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Istanbul with
representatives of French companies doing business in Turkey in a bid
to enlist their support against a controversial French bill that has
threatened to poison bilateral ties.
The bill, to be debated in the French Parliament, makes it an offense
to deny that Armenians were the victims of genocide under the Ottoman
Empire during World War I.
“Erdogan asked French companies to lobby French legislators to try
to abort the bill”, Mustafa Abdullahoglu, an executive with a firm
he did not name, told reporters after the meeting. “He said the bill
would damage bilateral ties if adopted”.
Abdullahoglu said he feared a boycott of French goods in Turkey if
the bill was passed.
Representatives of carmakers Peugeot and Renault, the food giant
Danone, the construction materials producer Lafarge and supermarket
chain Carrefour were among the participants in the meeting.
Members of a Turkish-French business group flew to Paris to lobby
against the bill, which calls for a five-year prison term and a fine of
45,000 euros (57,000 dollars) for anyone who denies that the massacres
of Armenians constituted a genocide.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry warned that the adoption of the bill
could jeopardize “investments, the fruit of years of work, and France
will — so to speak — lose Turkey”.
The bill was first submitted in May but the debate ran out of
parliamentary time before a vote could be held.
The head of Turkey’s largest business group TUSIAD also condemned
the bill, calling it the reflection of “fears that Turkey’s bid
for European Union membership can materialize” and an attempt at
“disrupting efforts for constructive dialogue and analytical debate”.
“I appeal to French politicians: Don’t you see that you are
jeopardizing all the political, economic and social relations that
France has had with Turkey for centuries for the sake of your own
political interests?” Omer Sabanci said in a statement, carried by
the Anatolia news agency.
In 2001 France passed a resolution recognizing the killings as
“genocide”, prompting Ankara to retaliate by sidelining French
companies from public tenders and cancelling several projects awarded
to French firms.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered
in orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917. Turkey rejects the
genocide label, arguing that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many
Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rebelled against Ottoman
rule in Eastern Anatolia and sided with invading Russian troops as
the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.

ARMENIANS RALLY AGAINST TURKISH UNIFIL FORCE
Monday Morning, Lebanon
Oct 16 2006
As troops from various countries were traveling or preparing to travel
to join the reinforced UNIFIL, thousands of Lebanon’s Armenians
rallied in Beirut against Turkish troops taking part in the force,
on the same day France moved to make denial of the “Ottoman genocide
of Armenians” a crime.
Armenian political and religious leaders attended the demonstration,
which came just two days after the first contingent of Turkish
peacekeepers arrived.
The rally took place on Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, which honors six
Lebanese nationalists who were hanged by the Ottomans during World
War I.
The crowd, drawn from an Armenian community of about 140,000 people,
held high banners denouncing the presence of Turkish troops as “an
insult to the collective memory of the Armenian people”, while waving
Armenian, Lebanese and French flags.
Overriding widespread opposition, the Turkish Parliament approved a
government motion on September 5 to contribute troops to UNIFIL.
In total, Turkey is to deploy some 700 soldiers in Lebanon, including
troops aboard naval ships. Those who landed last Tuesday were the
first Muslim peacekeepers to arrive in the country.
Turkey contests the term “genocide” and strongly opposed the French
bill. It says 300,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks, died in
civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence and sided
with invading Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire fell apart during
World War I.
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their ancestors were slaughtered
in orchestrated killings, which they maintain can only be seen as
genocide.
The French bill must now go to the Senate, or upper house of
Parliament, for another vote.

ARMENIAN CAR IMPORTS UP IN 2006
By Anna Saghabalian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 16 2006
The Armenian customs reported on Monday a 30 percent jump in the number
of cars imported to the country during the first nine months of this
year, presenting it as another indication of rising living standards.
Armen Avetisian, the chief of the State Customs Committee (SCC),
said almost 60 percent of the 17,000 or so imported vehicles were
second-hand European cars worth up to $5,000. “Most of the imported
cars are inexpensive and intended for the growing middle class,”
he said.
The SCC data show that local dealerships and private individuals
brought in a total of some 16,500 cars during the whole of last year.
The bulk of them were sold in Yerevan where traffic has grown much
heaver in recent years and where rush-hour traffic jams are an
increasingly serious problem.
The number of cars is continuing to rise despite a further drop in
imports of petrol and diesel fuel which the SCC said shrunk by 7,000
metric tons from January through August. Avetisian attributed this
to local motorists’ growing reliance on the much cheaper liquefied gas.
Retail sales of propane have soared during the period in question,
he said.
The customs figures also indicate growing demand in brand new and
expensive cars that are imported by Armenian companies usually
operating as official distributors of Western and Russian automakers.
According to the SCC, those companies imported more than 5,500 such
vehicles in 2006. However, the 43 dealerships registered in Armenia
claimed to brought in only a total of 552 cars.
The State Commission on Protection of Economic Competition (SCPEC)
said last August that it has launched an official inquiry into the
huge discrepancy between the reported figures. Its findings have not
been made public yet.

SYRIAN ARMENIANS DISAPPROVE OF FRENCH BILL
By Bostan Cemiloglu, Cihan News Agency, Damascus
Zaman, Turkey
Oct 16 2006
Armenians living in Syria have expressed their disapproval of a French
bill that makes it a crime to deny that a genocide of Armenians was
perpetrated by Ottoman Turks during World War I.
Edward Halladciyan, the son of a family forced to emigrate from
Kahramanmaras to Syria, has been operating a tourism agency called
Al Boustan with his Turkish friend Yusuf Isa for fifteen years.
Halladciyan believes the decision of the French parliament was purely
political, expressing that the government used the Armenian issue as
a political trump card.
Halladciyan, who has the Armenian flag on his desk and a picture of
Sultanahmet Mosque on his wall, asserted that problems between Turks
and Armenians have been left in the past.
“In Syria, we are like brothers with the Turks. It has been years since
we forgot the allegations that Turkey committed genocide against the
Armenians. This is an issue which dates over a century.
We Armenians are used to living with Turks,” Halladciyan said.
Thinking that France is using the Armenian issue as a way to block
Turkey’s EU bid, he added that if a real solution was being sought,
then both sides should come together and reach a compromise through
negotiations.

CONSTRUCTION BOOM ‘ADDS TO ARMENIAN CURRENCY APPRECIATION’
By Ruzanna Khachatrian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 16 2006
An ongoing construction boom, the driving force behind Armenia’s
double-digit economic growth, has also contributed to the dramatic
strengthening of the national currency, the head of the Armenian
Central Bank said on Monday.
The Armenian dram has gained more than 40 percent in value against
the U.S. dollar since December 2003 and is continuing to appreciate,
hurting domestic manufacturers and many people dependent on cash
remittances from their relatives working abroad. The process has
sparked opposition allegations that the Armenian authorities have been
deliberately boosting the dram to siphon off a large part of those
remittances and to benefit wealthy government-connected importers.
The authorities, backed by the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank, strongly deny any exchange rate manipulation. The Central
Bank has said all along that dram’s strengthening has primarily
resulted from recent years’ increase in hard currency wired home by
hundreds of thousands of Armenians living abroad. Their total amount
is expected to exceed $1 billion this year.
According to the bank’s chairman, Tigran Sarkisian, the rapidly
growing construction sector is also responsible for the exchange
rate fluctuations. Official figures show the sector expanding by
more than 40 percent during the first half of this year. The growth
is particularly visible in central Yerevan where dozens of expensive
apartment blocks are currently under construction.
“Today 45 buildings are being constructed in the center of Yerevan
alone,” Sarkisian told hearings on the issue held at the Armenian
parliament. “Their dollar-based market value varies from $20 million
to $25 million.”
The growth of Armenia’s construction sector is good for everyone,
including the low-income stratum of the population which is getting
jobs, high salaries,” he added.
Trade and Economic Development Minister Karen Chshmaritian, who
also attended the hearings, acknowledged that Armenian manufacturers
increasingly have trouble competing with imported goods and selling
their production abroad. “Of course the stronger is inflicting damage
[on the manufacturing sector,]” he told RFE/RL.
But Chshmaritian insisted that Armenia’s industrial output, excluding
polished diamonds, has not shrunk as a result. He said local exporters
can offset negative effects of the dram’s strengthening by improving
their management and becoming more competitive.
But Suren Bekirski, director of the export-oriented textile company
Tosp, disagreed, warning that it risks facing bankruptcy. “As a local
manufacturer selling goods here, I gain something [from the stronger
dram],” he told RFE/RL. “But as an exporter, I lose twice as much …
If things go on like this, we will last for only a few more months.”
According to official data released by the State Customs Committee
on Monday, Armenia’s net exports fell by more than 6 percent to 296
billion drams ($777 million) while imports rose by 16 percent to 573
billion drams ($1.5 billion) during the first nine months of the year.
The customs chief, Armen Avetisian, downplayed the increased trade
deficit, saying that the physical volume of Armenian goods sold abroad
was the same as during the same period last year. He claimed that the
monetary value of the exports has decreased mainly due to a drop in
international prices of some of Armenia’s key exports such as diamonds,
molybdenum and even gold.

I DON’T TRUST CHIRAC
By Tufan Turenc
Turkish Press
Oct 16 2006
HURRIYET- I want to write very harsh words about French President
Jacque Chirac. I’m trying hard to stop myself. I don’t trust Chirac
at all. His majesty called Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
told him that he was very sorry. He said that he understands and
shares our feelings and criticism and that this development stems
from the upcoming general elections. Then he promised that he would
do his best to make sure the bill won’t become law. So kind of him!
Where has he been until now as France’s president? I wonder if Chirac
is making fun of the Turkish nation. They immediately forgot the
show that he made in the Armenian capital Yerevan last week. I also
wonder if he didn’t say last week that each country has to face up
to its tragedies and mistakes in the past in line with its level of
development and that Turkey should recognize the Armenian genocide in
order to gain European Union membership. What sort of a statesmanship
is this? How can the Turkish nation trust a president whose words
now contradict what he said just a week before? Who can guarantee
that his majesty won’t say something against Turkey tomorrow? Chirac
should realize that the Turkish nation knows better than to take
him seriously.
I wonder what Erdogan and the Cabinet ministers think about Chirac. I
believe they don’t trust him either. Turkey should act coolly now. We
should see that this nonsensical, illogical law which completely
violates democratic values has damaged France’s international
respectability and we should make use of it very well. We should make a
dignified response to this hostile stance of France. Let’s not sully
our just cause with pointless displays like throwing eggs at the
doors and windows of French representatives and setting their flag
on fire. Let’s not forget that trying to impose excessive sanctions
on commercial interests would only harm us. The Turkish Republic is
a state of law. Harming French firms which have invested in Turkey
would hit us like a boomerang. Our struggle with France should be
done through political and legal avenues. Turkey has the resources,
experience and diplomatic culture to do this.