Expert: Russia may deploy its air-defense systems in Armenia
Regnum, Russia
June 26 2006
“If Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhaz conflicts escalate, it will
reflect in the whole Southern and Northern Caucasus,” Director of the
Center for Military and Political Forecasting Anatoly Tsyganok stated
on July 25, 2006 during ‘Russia and Georgia: Variants of Way out from
Deadlock’ press conference in Moscow, a REGNUM correspondent informs.
“Even if presidents of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkariya, and
other Caucasian republics call on their people not to participate in
these conflicts, it does not mean that some representatives of these
peoples will not participate in them,” Mr. Tsyganok believes. “It is
Caucasus – they have relatives everywhere,” he added.
According to Mr. Tsyganok, Russia does not wish these conflicts’
escalation. “If Russia fails to agree with Georgia, it will deploy
its air-defense systems in the Armenian territory, strengthening and
securing its borders in such way,” he believes.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Liana Kavsadze: “Some Armenians feel embarrassed for aggression against Azerbaijan”
Today, Azerbaijan
June 26 2006
Member of the Russian Journalists Union Liana Kavsadze is visiting
Azerbaijan at the invitation of the Caucasus Media Public Union.
Kavsadze held press conference “The role of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
in geopolitical atmosphere, role of globalization in the Caucasus
and role of Islam and Koran in contemporary world”.
The journalist said she has long been in sympathy with Islam
criticizing Western states’ position regarding Muslims.
She underlined that Islam never propagates terrorism. Kavsadze also
said they will take some measures to unite world journalists in one
position in order to prevent Western pressure on Islam.
The Russian journalist also said she got to know Armenian society
position, which condemns Armenian policy against Azerbaijan.
“Armenia supported by foreign protectors has occupied Azerbaijani
lands. Some Armenians say they fell embarrassed before Azerbaijanis for
their country’s action. I don’t agree with accusing Russia completely
for this conflict. Western states, which wanted the USSR to collapse,
were more active in this process. On the contrary, Russia has devised
a special plan to ensure peace and solve problems in the Caucasus. I
am familiarized with this strategy and think this plan is quite
democratic,” the Russian journalists said.
Kavsadze expressed dissatisfaction with the Georgian government
providing an opportunity for the Western capitalists. She said the
western states are taking interest in making tense situation in
the region.
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Iran World Cup midfielder to move to Bolton
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
July 26, 2006 Wednesday 8:22 PM EST
DPA SPORTS Football Iran Iran World Cup midfielder to move to Bolton
Tehran Iran midfielder Andranik Teymourian – the only Christian on an
otherwise Muslim national team – is moving to English Premier League
club Bolton Wanderers, the ISNA news agency reported Wednesday.
The 23-year old Iranian-Armenian, widely known as Ando, will leave
the Abu Moslem club in Mashad, northeastern Iran, and play in England
next season, ISNA said.
Ando was among his side’s best at this year’s World Cup, where Iran
lost two games and drew one, dropping out in the group stage.
ISNA said Abu Moslem president Nasser Shafaq confirmed the transfer
and said that the Bolton manager would come to Iran next week to
finalise the contact.
After Karim Baqeri, who played for Charlton Athletic in the 2000- 2001
season, Ando would be the second Iranian to play in the Premier League.
He was the second Iranian-Armenian to play for Iran in a World Cup
final round.
In 1978, defender Andranik Eskandarian played at the World Cup in
Argentina. He was signed by New York Cosmos to play with football
legends such as Franz Beckenbauer and Pele.

Armenian Airbus crash in May caused by piloting errors – officials
AFX International Focus
July 26, 2006 Wednesday 11:07 AM GMT
MOSCOW (AFX) – The crash of an Armenian Airbus plane off Russia’s
Black Sea coast in May that killed all 113 people on board was caused
by piloting errors, Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said.
‘Weather conditions were difficult, the human factor played its role,’
Levitin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying at a press
conference, held about the results of an inquiry into the crash of
the A320 liner belonging to Armavia airlines.
Tatyana Anodina, head of the intergovernmental aviation committee
that took part in the enquiry, said: ‘The main pilot did not ensure
control of the plane as far as angle and altitude were concerned.’
‘The co-pilot did not ensure necessary control on the descent,’
Anodina said, adding that an alarm system had gone off as the plane
plunged but that it was too late to regain altitude.
The Airbus A320 plunged into the Black Sea on May 3 amid rainy weather
as it was coming in to land in Sochi — a popular coastal resort city
in southwest Russia.

NEW POLL SHOWS ARMENIANS EQUALLY SUPPORTIVE OF RUSSIA, WEST
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC –
June 26 2006
By Emil Danielyan
A U.S.-funded opinion poll released this month paints an interesting,
if contradictory, picture of the geopolitical preferences of Armenia’s
population. It shows that the vast majority of Armenians continue to
support the close political and military ties with Russia maintained
by their government. At the same, they regard the European Union as
the most trustworthy international institution and would like their
country to eventually join the bloc. Public support for Armenia’s
eventual accession to NATO likewise seems to be considerably stronger
than it was in the past.
The voter survey, commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International
Development, was designed and conducted in early May by the Gallup
Organization, the U.S. International Republican Institute, as well
as the Armenian Sociological Association. Some 1,200 people randomly
interviewed across Armenia were asked to weigh in on a wide range of
issues mainly relating to domestic politics and economic development.
It emerged that most of them feel the tiny South Caucasus state is
on the wrong track, despite being optimistic about its future.
The poll suggests that ordinary Armenians also want two seemingly
irreconcilable things: continued alliance with Russia and integration
into European and Euro-Atlantic structures. Eighty-six percent of
respondents described Russia as Armenia’s most important international
partner, considering it, with varying degrees of conviction, to
be a “trustworthy ally.” Not surprisingly, public support for the
presence of a Russian military base on Armenian soil is still strong,
with almost two-thirds of those polled saying that it has a positive
impact on their country’s independence and stability. Only 6% referred
to Russia as an external threat.
These figures reflect a traditionally strong pro-Russian sentiment
in Armenia, where many people have for centuries looked to Moscow
for protection against hostile Muslim neighbors. It has only been
reinforced by Armenia’s unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan over
Karabakh and extremely strained relations with Turkey. Still, there
are clear indications that this sentiment has been slowly but steadily
eroding not least because of Moscow’s hard bargaining in economic
dealings with Yerevan and the Russian authorities’ perceived reluctance
to tackle racially motivated attacks on Armenian immigrants. Russia’s
waning influence in the South Caucasus and Armenia’s increased contacts
with the Council of Europe, the European Union, NATO, and the United
States have also been a major factor.
The USAID-funded poll offers more proof of this trend. It shows in
particular that Armenians trust the EU more than their army and the
ancient Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenian state institutions and
political parties are trusted by barely one-third of the electorate.
By contrast, 87% and 51% think well of the EU and NATO, respectively.
Accordingly, 80% are in favor of Armenian membership in the EU.
(Curiously, roughly as many respondents want Armenia to remain in
the increasingly moribund Commonwealth of Independent States.)
Public support for NATO membership is much weaker: only 40%
said Armenia should “definitely” or “probably” join the U.S.-led
alliance in the future, with another 45% less than enthusiastic
about such a prospect. Yet the very fact of Armenian public opinion
being essentially split down the middle on the issue marks quite a
significant change from the not-so-distant past when the military
alliance with Russia was hardly even questioned by Armenian
policymakers and ordinary people alike. The change was exposed by
other surveys conducted in the country in recent years.
One such poll, conducted a year ago by the Armenian Center for
National and International Studies (ACNIS), a private think tank,
found that Armenians are evenly divided over NATO membership,
with approximately 34% of them backing or opposing the idea and
the remaining 32% undecided. According to another poll released by
the Yerevan-based polling organization Vox Populi in October 2004,
only 38% percent of the public thought that military cooperation with
Russia should remain the bedrock of Armenian security policy. Earlier
in 2004 ACNIS questioned 50 local political and public policy experts
and found that two-thirds of them stand for Armenia’s accession to
NATO within the next decade. Most of those experts also felt that
Moscow limits their country’s independence.
The apparent change in public mood has proceeded parallel to a
deepening of Yerevan’s cooperation with the EU, NATO, and the United
States as part of what the administration of President Robert Kocharian
calls a “complementary foreign policy.” The Armenian government
launched an individual partnership action plan (IPAP) with NATO last
December and is currently negotiating with the EU on a plan of action
stemming from its inclusion in the bloc’s European Neighborhood Policy
(ENP) program. Kocharian signaled his intention to accelerate Armenia’s
integration into Western structures on July 13 as he presided over a
meeting of a high-level government commission tasked with coordinating
the process. He instructed its members to come up with a timetable of
“concrete activities” resulting from Yerevan’s commitments to the
Council of Europe, the EU, and NATO within the next two months.
How far the Kocharian administration can go in trying to maintain
equally close relations with Russia and the West has been a matter
of contention in Armenia. Pro-Western opposition leaders and other
government critics say Yerevan will sooner or later have to make a
clear strategic choice in favor of one of the parties to the ongoing
geopolitical game in the region. But as the latest poll suggests,
most Armenians share the “complementarity” of their rulers.
(Statement by the Armenian president’s office, July 13; Armenia
National Voter Study, USAID, IRI, Baltic Surveys/The Gallup
Organization, ASA, May 2006; Haykakan Zhamanak, July 2, 2005; RFE/RL
Armenia Report, May 27, 2004)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Safe from harm
Blacktown Advocate (Australia)
July 26, 2006 Wednesday
AS 15-year-old Annette Mazmanians ran into her family’s arms at the
arrivals lounge of Sydney airport last week, she gave way to the
pent-up emotion of her week-long ordeal in the Middle East.
The Quakers Hill resident was one of 67 teenagers from the Armenian
dance group Hamazkayeen Sevan, who became trapped in Beirut when the
brewing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted.
The exhausted dancers and their chaperones were greeted by hundreds
of emotional family members bearing flowers and balloons when they
arrived shortly after 11pm on Thursday night.
“I felt the wheels land into Sydney, I was really relieved and happy
home sweet home,” Annette told reporters. “As much as you’re far away
from your parents and you have your friends around, you just want to
come back home as soon as you can.”
Over the course of six highly-fraught days, the dance troupe hid in
their hotel in the city’s Christian quarter before travelling by bus
to Jordan via Syria. They then boarded three planes in Bahrain for
the long flight back to Sydney.
“As soon as we got into the bus to go to Jordan, and just to escape,
to evacuate from there, we felt one bomb and that was the closest. We
saw the buildings just go off and we felt the vibration, it was pretty
scary,” she said.
Annette’s father Karl said the group had been on the last stop of a
tour which included Armenia and Syria and which should have brought
them home on July 14.
“They were only there for a brief stop over, just two days, but once
the bombs started coming in they had to stay in the hotel,” he said.
“Even when you hear that they are OK and they are coming back you
still don’t 100 per per cent relax until you see them coming through
the gate.”
Life is gradually returning to normal in the Mazmanians household.
Annette has returned to St Gregory’s Armenian School in Rouse Hill
and is catching up with friends and relatives.
“She won’t be going anywhere alone for a while that’s for sure,”
Mr Mazmanians chuckled. “The family is just looking to put this
behind us.”
At the time of going to press, about 2,600 Australian citizens had
been evacuated from Lebanon.

The Abattoir and Gandhiji
Chennai Online, India
June 26 2006
Closer to the YMCA is the Golf Course of Chennai. A little away
from this is the city’s abattoir. It is a French word and should be
pronounced “abathwa”. Do you know what happens here? Daily hundreds
of cattle are being slaughtered for their flesh. Even though this
abattoir or slaughterhouse is located at Saidapet, you can say that
you cannot spot any shop that sells mutton in Saidapet. Can it be
said that the Saidapet residents’ deference towards Gandhiji could
be the reason for this? Gandhi’s birthday will be celebrated in a
very modest way. But you still find about 20 persons who follow in
the footsteps of Gandhiji. Of them, one person runs a tailoring shop
from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening. From 7 to 9 in the morning
and 5 to 8 in the evening it transforms into a library. He runs this
library with the books that he has collected and there are certain
books and collections, which you cannot find elsewhere.
In the old Chennai, the Saidapet market was a very important one.
Today modern markets are functioning in every part of Chennai. But
if you need to buy a mud pot now you should go to Saidapet. A small
trading company went from door to door and transformed the face
of salesmanship in India. That is the VGP Brothers. They made the
“Murphy” radio affordable even to a poor man by their easy monthly
instalment scheme, with which the less fortunate had access to all
radio programmes. It will not be an exaggeration if we say that, the
advent of the VGP Company brought out a new dimension in the daily
life of the Tamil people. After radio, they started selling various
household products in the easy monthly instalment scheme. This grew
up to such a great level and they started selling house sites also.
Today this instalment scheme has become a very common aspect of life.
This VGP Company is also running a large entertainment park today.
The VGP Square at Saidapet was a needed change to that place. The
few metres occupied by the VGP Square are the only modern structure
in Saidapet which otherwise reflects obsoleteness everywhere.
If one boundary of Saidapet is the Adyar River, then a significant
place in it is the Maraimalai Adigal Bridge. It was called the
Marmalong Bridge for over 200 years. The Armenian trader who built
the steps in St. Thomas Mount constructed this bridge. In the 1970s
this bridge was broadened. This was a time when Tamil enthusiasm was
prevalent everywhere and every non-Tamil name was replaced by a Tamil
name. This bridge was also renamed. Even then for many it is just the
Saidapet Bridge. But Saidapet itself is a very big bridge. It is the
bridge that links the South Tamil Nadu and Chennai.
Let us scan Chennai again….
Ashokamitran (Translated by Sujatha Pradeep)
es/2006/remi12.asp

Terror in hotel; Lebanon is such a beautiful country and it has been destroyed
Hill Shire Times (Australia)
July 25, 2006 Tuesday
NOTHING could have prepared 16-year-old Peter Kolokossian and his
brother Garbis for what they saw in Lebanon.
The Castle Hill teenagers were trapped in an hotel in the Christian
area of Beirut with the Sydney Armenian Dance Group, as the warfare
between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon escalated.
The trip of a lifetime lived up to all their expectations, with the
dance group lauded and applauded throughout the international festival
in Armenia, taking part in both the closing and opening ceremonies.
“The atmosphere was huge dancing in front of 20,000 people in Armenia,”
Garbis said.
“We were on Syrian, Armenian and Lebanese television. It was the most
amazing experience.”
The group performed several concerts in Armenia during their three-week
stay and then a special concert in Syria before returning to Lebanon
for another concert before they flew home.
The had performed in Beirut when Garbis heard of the kidknapping of
two Isreali soldiers.
“I knew straight away that something would happen. Then 20 minutes
later my mum called and she was crying on the phone,” he said.
The group was due to fly out the next day. It was that day Beirut
airport was bombed and the airport closed.
They and their families then waited five agonising days before
Australian consulate staff got them on to three buses and on the road
to Jordan through Syria.
Garbis said: “People were crying. One of the mums thought she’d never
get back for her son’s wedding.
“It was frightening.”
He said they could not leave the hotel for two days, because when
they knew when they were evacuated, it would be quick.
“A lot of people didn’t want to go by bus because they knew one had
been blown up by the border and 20 people killed,” Garbis said.
When the buses came, escorted by Australian Federal Police, it was
met with mixed emotions.
Peter said: “We had grown so close to some of the families [in
Lebanon’s Armenian community] our hearts were breaking leaving them
behind.”
Garbis said he watched families clutching their young children as
the buildings shook around them.
“Lebanon is such a beautiful country and it has been destroyed,”
he said.
With bombs exploding close by, the brothers found themselves in two
different buses for the 17-hour journey to Amman in Jordan .
“We were packed like sardines,” Peter said. “It was quiet,” Garbis
said. “People were praying.”
The brothers arrived most of the majority of the dance troupe at
Sydney airport at 10.30pm on Friday Garbis’s 19th birthday.
They were met by family, parents Silvia and Reg, plus younger brothers,
Michael and John sister Saree and aunts uncles, grandparents and
friends.

Crew responsible for Armenian A320 crash near Sochi – Levitin
Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS Military Newswire
July 26, 2006 Wednesday 12:14 PM MSK
The crash of an Airbus A320 passenger jet belonging to the Armavia
airline near Sochi on May 3 happened due to the fault of the crew,
Transportation Minister and head of an ad hoc government commission
investigating the crash Igor Levitin said at a press conference in
Moscow on Wednesday.
“The human factor played its role in difficult weather conditions,”
Levitin said.

Crew responsible for Armenian A320 crash near Sochi – minister (Part 2)
Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS Military Newswire
July 26, 2006 Wednesday 2:10 PM MSK
MOSCOW July 26
The crash of an Airbus A320 passenger jet belonging to the Armavia
airline near Sochi on May 3 happened due to the fault of the crew,
Transportation Minister and head of an ad hoc government commission
investigating the crash Igor Levitin said at a press conference in
Moscow on Wednesday.
“The human factor played its role in difficult weather conditions,”
Levitin said.
Tatyana Anodina, the head of the Interstate Aviation Committee, a CIS
organization investigating air incidents, told journalists that “the
plane was landing on autopilot and strictly following the glide slope
in a landing configuration, when it received a report from air traffic
control that the cloud base was lowering. The plane stopped descending
at a speed of around 340 meters, and started a right climbing turn.
While performing this turn, the captain switched the autopilot off
and made the plane to descend.”
“These actions by the captain were not properly controlled by the
second pilot, and the crew’s following actions were uncoordinated
and inadequate to roll the plane out,” Anodina said.
As for suggestions that the crash could have been caused by a
mechanical fault, the commission’s conclusion reads, “There were no
malfunctions in the aircraft’s engines and systems, and the plane
normally responded to both the autopilot’s commands and the crew’s
actions. There was enough fuel on board to safely complete the flight.”
The A320 crash near Sochi at 2:13 a.m. Moscow time on May 3 (2213
GMT on May 2) killed 105 passengers and eight crewmembers.