CONCEPT OF SCIENTIFIC REFORMS TO BE SUBMITTED AT THE END OF 2006
ArmRadio.am
19.08.2006 15:14
A concept of reforming Armenia’s scientific sector is to be submitted
for a public discussion in November-December 2006, RA Minister of
Education and Science Levon Mkrtichyan told reporters.
According to him, the Armenian Government has approved a list and
schedule of necessary measures. An interagency task group has been
formed as well.
“During one month the group is to elaborate a comprehensive program of
scientific reforms. The program is supposed to settle all disputable
issues by March-April 2007,” he said. The formation of a single system
of managing Armenia’s scientific sector is to get under way in the
second ten-day part of December 2007, ARKA News Agency reported.
The Minister pointed out that in 2007-2008 funding of the program
will be received, particularly under the EU-implemented program.
Mkrtichyan said that the implementation of the program will resolve
the problem of forming a special scientific fund in Armenia.
“It should be noted the schedule of implementation is rather strict,
and the interagency group will supervise its fulfillment.”

POPE APPEALS FOR THE RELEASE OF PRIEST KIDNAPPED IN BAGHDAD
AP Worldstream
Aug 19, 2006
Pope Benedict XVI has appealed for the release of a priest kidnapped
at gunpoint in Baghdad, in a telegram sent to the Chaldean Patriarch
of the Iraqi capital, the Vatican said Saturday.
In the telegram, sent by the Vatican’s Secretary of State Angelo
Sodano, the pontiff said he was “deeply saddened” by the abduction
of the Rev. Hanna Saad Sirop and made a “heartfelt appeal to the
abductors to release the young priest at once, so that he can return
to the service of God, the Christian community and his countrymen.”
The telegram was sent to Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel Delly. It gave
the name of the priest as Saad Syrop Hanna, differing slightly from
the name first published Friday by the Vatican-affiliated Asia News
agency.
Bishops from all of Baghdad’s Christian churches have sent a letter
to the Iraqi government asking them to help secure the release of
the 34-year-old priest.
The priest, who is director of the Theology Department at Babel
College, was abducted Tuesday as he left Mass celebrating the
Assumption holiday.
The Italian missionary news agency MISNA reported that a large ransom
was asked for the release of the priest, but did not say how much.
In his message, Benedict said he would pray for an end to “this
dreadful scourge” of kidnappings in Iraq and urged Catholics there
“to work together with all religious believers and people of good
will toward a future of harmonious and respectful coexistence for
the beloved nation of Iraq.”
Christians make up just 3 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people. The
major Christian groups include Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians,
with small numbers of Roman Catholics.

THE SUNDAY CHESS COLUMN
By Malcolm Pein
Sunday Telegraph/UK
Filed: 20/08/2006
Eyebrows were raised when Carsten Hensel the agent for the Classical
Chess World Champion Vladimir Kramnik claimed his charge would be happy
with a 50 per cent score at the Dortmund Sparkasse tournament. Hensel
claimed that since his man was due to play Veselin Topalov in September
in the world title unification match he would be keeping secret his
new ideas for the opening. In addition the burden of four games out
of seven with black was lowering Kramnik’s expectations he claimed.
Naturally after such a dire pronouncement Kramnik duly won the
tournament on a tie-break, despatching the Georgian GM Jobava Baadur
in just 15 moves, and winning the key battle against Peter Leko with
white in the last round. Leko had been winning the event to that point.
England’s Michael Adams was very solid. He defeated Boris Gelfand
and drew the rest. While Baadur was a newcomer to the tournament who
qualified by virtue of his victory at the 2005 Aeroflot Open, Levon
Aronian’s failure was a surprise. The Armenian, ranked world number
three, had swept all before him of late but here scored just 2/7.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 Kramnik 2743 d * d 1 d d d 1 4.5 2 Svidler 2742 d *
d d d d 1 1 4.5 3 Adams 2732 d d * d 1 d d d 4 4 Leko 2738 0 d d * d 1
1 d 4 5 Gelfand 2729 d d 0 d * d 1 1 4 6 Naiditsch 2664 d d d 0 d * d 1
3.5 7 Aronian 2761 d 0 d 0 0 d * d 2 8 Jobava 2651 0 0 d d 0 0 d * 1.5
V Kramnik- P Leko Sparkassen Dortmund (7) Nimzo-Indian
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 0-0 5. a3 Bxc3+ 6.Qxc3 b6 7.Bg5 Bb7
Many GMs play this with both colours, it has become a very popular line
8. f3 h6 9.Bh4 d5 10. e3 Nbd7 11. cxd5 Nxd5 The theory of this line
goes very deep. As in many lines of the Nimzo-Indian Black’s extra
development is a counterweight to White’s bishop pair 12.Bxd8 Nxc3
13.Bh4 Keeping the bishops 13. …Nd5 14.Bf2 c5 15. e4 Ne7 16.Ne2 Rac8
17.Nc3 cxd4 18.Bxd4 Nc5 19.Rd1 Rfd8 20.Be3 White has also played Bb5,
Be2 and Bxc5 20. …Rxd1+ 21.Kxd1 e5 22. b4 The first new move, 24.Kc2
Na4 25.Bd2 f5 was Bareev-Almasi 2003 22. …Ne6 23.Kc2 Nc6 24.Kb2 Kf8
25.Bc4 Ncd4 26.Bxe6! Very surprising but Kramnik’s remaining pieces
become active. Note that his king is good 26. …Nxe6 27.Nb5 Ra8 28. a4
Ba6 29.Na3! Rc8 30. b5 Bb7 31.Rc1! Rxc1 32.Kxc1 Very deep home analysis
I suspect, the plan of a4-a5 looks hard to meet 32. …Ke7 33. a5 bxa5
34.Bxa7 The white king is going to take the Black a pawn 34. …f5
34. …f6 35.Nc4 a4 36.Kb2 Nf4 37.Na5 Bc8 38. g3 Nd3+ 39.Ka3 35.
exf5 Nf4 36. g3 Nh3 37.Nc4 Ng5 38.Nxa5 Bd5 39. b6 Nxf3 40. h3 Ng5
41. b7 Bxb7 42.Nxb7 Nxh3 43.Bb6 Kd7 44.Be3 Ke7 45.Nc5 g6 46. fxg6
Kf6 47.Bxh6 Kxg6 48.Be3 and Black resigned.

Kucharian visits wind power plants built by Iran in Armenia
Mehr News Agency, Iran
Aug. 18, 2006
TEHRAN, Aug. 18 (MNA) – Robert Kocharian President of the Republic
of Armenia visited the wind power plants built by Iran in Armenia,
the Persian service of Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported
here on Friday.
The four power plants built by Iran have generated over 500,000
kilowatt/hours of electricity during the first half of the current
year, noted the Armenian president during his visit to the power
stations located in the Pushkin region of the Transcaucasian republic.
He pointed to another power plant also under construction by Iran in
Kurtan – one of the 107 villages of the Lori region in the northern
part of Armenia – and explained that the facility consisted of five
wind turbines with an annual capacity of 19.5 million kilowatts
of electricity.
There are 40 power plants currently operational in the republic,
he also commented adding that 30 more are expected to be added to
the figure.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

U.S. Not Take Notice Of Armenian Lobby’s Letter On Lebanon
Anatolian Times, Turkey
Aug. 18, 2006
WASHINGTON D.C. – U.S. Department of State has not taken notice of
the letter of Armenian lobby –addressed to U.S. President George W.
Bush– requesting that Turkey should not participate in UN Peace
Force in Lebanon.
Replying to a question on the letter sent by Armenian National
Committee of America (ANCA) Chairman Ken Hachikian to U.S. President
Bush, State Department’s Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey said he did not
read the letter.
Stating that talks regarding peace force in Lebanon are under way at
the UN in New York, Casey noted that the U.S. administration wished
that countries which are eager to contribute to this force would be
included in negotiations, as well as Turkey.
ANCA’s letter claimed that Ottoman Empire ruled the Middle East
violently for centuries, asserting that Turkey’s participation in
peace force in Lebanon did not comply with national interests of the
United States.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenia posts Q2 foreign reserves
RosBusinessConsulting, Russia
Aug. 18, 2006
RBC, 18.08.2006, Yerevan 18:34:58.Armenia’s gross foreign assets
rose by 5.7 percent ($43.4m) in Q2 2006 to $803.726m, the press
office of the Armenian Central Bank reports. International reserves
(foreign currency reserves) grew from $760.288m to $803.726m. The
country’s SDR in the IMF decreased by $6.1m (4.4m SDR) to $12.4m
(8.4m SDR). Its net foreign assets rose by 18.9 percent ($90.2m)
to $568.1m in the reporting period.
Armenian gross foreign assets amounted to $755.160m as of January 1,
2006, including $755.037 of international reserves.
Armenia’s SDR in the IMF was $10.177m (7.121m SDR). Its net foreign
assets amounted to $472.424m, including $472.339m of currency reserves.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Arif Aliyev: Armenia and Georgia do not want to join international
conventions to clean the Kyur River
Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Aug. 18, 2006
[ 18 Aug. 2006 19:59 ]
“70 percent of Azerbaijan’s water balance is formed outside the
republic. We are obliged to use Kyur’s water, because, it is the
biggest water source in the country.
Despite Azerbaijan’s efforts, neither Armenia, nor Georgia wants
to join international conventions to clean the Kyur,” Arif Aliyev,
“Azersu” OJSC chairman told journalists, APA reports.
He said Baku is supplied with drinking water that meets all standards.
“99 percent of harmful substances are cleaned. Then the water is
disinfected with chlorine,” Aliyev said. /APA/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Radio Polonia, Poland
Aug. 18, 2006
A turn for the worse
German-Polish relations turn sourer still; Ukrainians working without
a permit in Poland; and illegal betting on the internet are just some
of the stories in the Polish current affairs magazines.
Reviewed by Krysia Kolsowska
18.08.06
“A turn for the worse”, writes Solidarnosc, a weekly of the
Solidarity trade union, commenting on the current state of
Polish-German relations. They took another plunge recently over an
exhibition mounted in Berlin about expulsions in the 20th century.
Poland argues that the exhibition puts an equality mark between the
suffering of Armenians or ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and
post-war deportations of Germans from Eastern Europe under the
decisions of the allied powers.
This is an offense to Poles, victims of the war started by Germany.
If such false analogies gain an official status, then the Germans
themselves will not be able to understand the horror of the last war,
says Solidarnosc. Erica Steinbach, president of the German expellees
union, is entering the center of German politics. The exhibition
sponsored by her organization was mounted in a prestigious place and
its opening was graced by many leading German personalities. This is
why Poles are alarmed. A spirit of historical manipulation has been
revived, something which should worry German people most. That was
Solidarnosc.
The weekly Polityka writes that a day after Erica Steinbach opened
the exhibition about expulsions, renowned German writer and Nobel
literary prize winner Guenter Grass revealed that he had served in
notorious Waffen SS units towards the end of the war. The weekly
recalls that five years ago, Grass published a novel on how the
Soviets sunk a ship evacuating Germans trapped by the Red Army in
East Prussia, killing over 9 thousand of its passengers, more than a
half of them children. By doing this he drew attention to the tragedy
of German refugees.
Now he is giving a clear signal to the Germans that they should stop
pretending: don’t cheat ourselves now that we are old, because at a
young age the majority of us believed in Nazism and had some share in
it. But the weekly writes also that without Polish-German dialogue
our mutual neighbourhood is threatened by provincial egocentrism and
the loss of empathy with neighbouring nations.
Newsweek reports that as many as 100,000 people from non-EU Ukraine
may be working in Poland without a permit. Only about 3 thousand are
employed legally. This will soon change, Poland’s labor ministry
plans to issue a regulation in the autumn enabling citizens of
neighbouring countries to work legally in this country. Today
Ukrainians who come to Poland find employment as manual workers.
Women, who may be teachers, nurses or accountants back home, work as
cleaners, child minders and cooks. Men usually work at construction
sites.
Their earnings are poor and cases of cheating by employers are not
that rare. Analysts sound an alarm that the Polish economy badly
needs immigrant labor today. Cheap workers from the East will fill a
gap on the market and contribute taxes to state coffers. Perhaps the
best example for Poland should be the economic boom experienced by
Ireland in the past decade also thanks to immigrant workers, Newsweek
points out.
Wprost publishes the list of Poland’s fifty richest politicians,
which is opened by 42 year old Janusz Palikot, a deputy of the
opposition liberal Civic Platform who declared to be worth 330
million zlotys. Palikot became involved in politics already as a very
wealthy man.
He became millionaire in the 90s, starting with production of wooden
cases for transporting alcohol and then moving on to alcohol
production. A completely different approach is represented by his
party colleague and now deputy to the European Parliament, Pawel
Piskorski. He was elected MP at the age of 23, even before graduating
from university. He made 1.7 million zlotys during his political
career, drawing many a suspicious look even from his party
colleagues.
Polish politicians, writes Wprost, tend to regard income statements
as a necessary evil, whereas revealing assets could be beneficial for
their political careers. People would perhaps be more willing to vote
for politicians who can prove what the sources of their income are,
than those who talk all the time about how little they own, says
Wprost.
Though it is illegal in Poland, around 200,000 Poles visit bookmakers
on the web, writes the weekly Przekroj reporting on studies conducted
by the Inter-active Market Research Institute. During the world
soccer championships, the number of Poles making bets through the net
rose more than 120 percent. Bookmakers admit unofficially that their
profits in Poland are smaller than in other countries because Poles
tend to win more often than representatives of other nations.

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
Aug. 18, 2006
DEPUTY JUSTICE MINISTER MEETS WITH UN HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES
[August 18, 2006, 16:32:54]
Togrul Musayev, Deputy Minister of Justice met with the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees Mr. Antonio Gutteres.
Mr. Musayev thanked the guest for his efforts towards solution of the
problems of over one million Azerbaijanis who became refugees and
IDPs as a result of the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict.
Speaking on the good human rights record of Azerbaijan, in
particular, concerning refugees and IDPs, Deputy Minister dwelt on
the work being done in Azerbaijan to strengthen the legal system and
raise the efficiency of the justice in accordance with the decree of
the President of Azerbaijan Republic of January 19, 2006. He touched
upon the activity of the justice and reforms being implemented in
this area, as well as long-term cooperation with the office of UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Azerbaijan.
Mr. Gutteres, in his turn, highly appreciated the work that
Azerbaijan government does to improve the state of refugees and IDPs.
UN High Commissioner stressed, in particular, the significance of the
work done to modernize and improve judicial system in Azerbaijan.
The sides shared views on other issues of mutual interest.
The discussions also involved Pirkko Kourula, Director of UNHCR’s
Bureau of Europe, Elchin Amirbayov, Ambassador of Azerbaijan to
Switzerland and Vilayat Zahirov, Deputy Minister of Justice
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Ertugrul Ozkok:Even the Armenian MPs want us in Lebanon
Hurriyet, Turkey
Aug. 18, 2006
What will happen if Turkish soldiers take up a position in the United
Nations peace-keeping force headed for Lebanon? How will the people
of Lebanon react?
The most meaningful answer to this came during Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul’s visit to Beirut this week; it came during a dramatic
moment at a dinner for four foreign ministers given by Prime Minister
Fuat Siniora.
*****
The dinner given by Siniora took place in a large salon in the Prime
Ministerial buildings in Beirut. The beauty of the salon apparently
touched everyone present at the dinner. The Lebanese Prime Minister
Siniora placed Gul at the same table as the French Foreign Minister
as well as ministers from both Pakistan and Malasyia. There were also
9 ministers present from the Lebanese cabinet. They were sitting at
different tables throughout the salon. Siniora said to Gul at the
dinner “Yours was the first civilian airplane to land at the Beirut
Airport following the start of the war.”
*****
The most important topic at the meal was the peace-keeping force to
be sent to Lebanon. PM Siniora underlined that, as far as he was
concerned, it was a necessity for Turkish soldiers to be present in
that force. When Gul asked Siniora how the Lebanese people would
react to the presence of Turkish soldiers, the answer he received was
“Even the Armenian minister on our cabinet wants the Turkish soldiers
to come.” The French minister in particular was surprised by these
words. But before this sense of surprise could pass, Siniora pulled
another trick out of his hat: he called over the Armenian cabinet
minister, who happened to be one of the 9 Lebanese ministers present,
to the table where Gul was sitting. Holding the Armenian minister’s
arm, Siniora asked “You also want the Turkish soldiers to come, don’t
you?” The Armenian minister answered in the affirmative. Of course,
this did surprise the Turkish authorities present in the salon,
especially since only that same morning, the Lebanon-based Armenian
Tashnak Party had issued a declaration announcing that it was against
the arrival of Turkish soldiers as a part of a possible peace-keeping
force.
In Lebanon, where the Armenians number around 120 thousand, the
Tashnak Party holds 6 seats in the Armenian Parliament. Clearly the
Armenian minister and the Tashnak declaration were at odds. It is
impossible to know whether the Armenian minister was speaking out of
the need to be polite, or in all honesty. Interestingly, Gul told
reporters at the meal who witnessed this exchange that Ankara was
“not taking seriously” the claims that the Armenian lobby in the US
was trying to prevent the Turkish soldiers from coming to Lebanon.
******
But going further, what do the Lebanese Shiites and in particular the
Hizbollah think of this all? Of the 9 government ministers present at
the dinner, 5 were Shiites known to be Hizbollah supporters. The
Shiite Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, Nebih Berri, answered the
question of how it was that the Lebanese Shiite community viewed the
potential arrival of Turkish soldiers in their country. Said Berri to
Gul at the dinner: “I speak in the name of the Shiites in Lebanon. We
want from our hearts that the Turkish soldiers participate in the
peace-keeping forces.”
*****
These are some of the behind-the-curtains events from Gul’s visit to
Beirut two days ago. And so, what will we say after all this to the
idea of our soldiers going to Lebanon? I don’t know what other people
think, but I have shared my views on this before: the Turkish
soldiers must join in the peace-keeping mission in Lebanon. We should
all prepare ourselves to think like this. The CHP is, however, is
against this. Which is why I want to remind them of this: even Spain
and Italy, who are busy withdrawing their military forces from Iraq,
are preparing to send their forces to Lebanon.
*****
Turkey is the strongest and most effective country in the region.
It must fulfill its duties on this round. But it must also take care
to minimize the risks for its soldiers on this mission. If only the
political opposition in Ankara would see fit to be helpful on this
front, our soldiers would go off with much more boosted morales.
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