BIG TAXPAYERS PAID 61.2 BILLION DRAMS
Lragir.am
26 April 06
In the first quarter of 2006 the 1000 large taxpayers of Armenia
paid 61.2 billion drams to the state budget. The news agency ARKA
informs that 33.7 billion out of 61.2 billion is return on tax, and
27.6 billion is return on customs duties. Like in 2005, in the first
quarter of the current year the first three taxpayers are Zangezour
Copper and Molybdenum Factory, Armentel and Armrusgasard. Next come
Flash and Petrol Service. The Distribution Networks of Armenia,
Grand Tobacco, the Nuclear Plant of Armenia, Mika Armenia, ARMENIA
International Airports, Coca Cola are in the first hundred.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LET’S GET READY TO GET COMPENSATION IN THE VISIBLE FUTURE
Lragir.am
26 April 06
In the visible future Turkey cannot have a positive approach to the
Armenian genocide, but the United States will recognize the Armenian
genocide and the European Union will put forward the recognition
of the Armenian genocide as a stipulation for Turkey’s membership,
announced Ruben Safrastyan, the head of the Department of Turkey of
the Institute of History, NAS, April 26, in a round-table meeting
“Global Processes of Recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Prospects
of Recognition of the Genocide”.
Safrastyan says Turkey is implementing a policy of pressure, trying to
reach adoption of decisions in Armenia that favor Turkey and offers
three conditions for the establishment of diplomatic relations:
borders, Karabakh, recognition of the genocide. Ruben Safrastyan
disagrees to a recently repeated viewpoint that Europe recognizes the
Armenian genocide not out of sympathy for Armenians but to prevent
Turkey’s membership to the EU. It is true that the stipulations of
the West for Turkey are determined by their interests and not those
of the Armenians’, but “public opinion in Europe changed dramatically
in the past two or three years. The intelligentsia is increasingly
often considering condemning Turkey.
If Germany admitted its faults, why shouldn’t Turkey do the same?”
According to Safrastyan, public opinion in Turkey has changed too,
but very slowly and very little. “People have started talking about the
genocide and in such a totalitarian country public opinion is opposed
to the government,” states the expert on Turkish studies. There is
nothing we could do, it is their turn to understand and condemn,
thinks Ruben Safrastyan, and enumerates the spheres where we, the
Republic of Armenia, have to act. “We have to shift the struggle for
the recognition of the genocide to the plane of the international
law and think about getting recovery. And the recovery can be in
different forms, including territory,” thinks Ruben Safrastyan. For
the line of struggle, it should be decided in an all-Armenian rally
which also must be organized by the leadership of Armenia.
Another expert on Turkish studies Lusineh Sahakyan, assistant of
the head of the Department of Turkish Studies of Yerevan State
University, says the recognition of the genocide has a strategic
importance for us. Probably in Turkey they also understand this
because Lusineh Sahakyan says Turkey has a sophisticated arsenal and
a scientific mechanism of denying the Armenian genocide, starting
from historical falsification, cleansing of Turkish archives since
1918, to manipulating strategic partnership with the Unites States
and breaking commercial relations with countries which recognize the
Armenian genocide.
The Armenians do not have such an arsenal for the recognition of the
Armenian genocide. Ruben Safrastyan finds, however, that it would
be better if others spoke about the recognition of the genocide for
Turkey not to say that Armenians are repeating their lies.

VALDAS ADAMKUS: NO GENOCIDE CAN BE JUSTIFIED
ArmRadio.am
26.04.2006 16:50
“No genocide can be justified,” President of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus
declared during the meeting with faculty and students of Yerevan
State University.
The Lithuanian President expressed the opinion that Armenia should
continue ” the dialogue on recognition of the Armenian Genocide.”
“I’m hopeful that some day the correct response will come out,
therefore do what you consider is correct,” The President noted.
In Adamkus’s words, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide y
Lithuania did not have an impact on Turkish-Lithuanian relations.

TODAY IS THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER
ArmRadio.am
26.04.2006 17:56
Today is the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
“Armenpress” was told at the Ukrainian Embassy in Armenia that more
than 145 sq. km. of Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian territory
was radioactively polluted; over 5 million people suffered from
the disaster, about 5 thousand settlements were subject to nuclide
contamination. 20 years after the disaster a number of issues are
still awaiting settlement.
Ukraine will always remember the courage of more than 3 thousand
Armenians, who did their best to soften the results of the Chernobyl
disaster. Later 400 of these died because of radiation.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

TURKEY IS THE MOST ANTI-AMERICAN COUNTRY
Lragir.am
26 April 06
The results of a survey conducted by BBC suggest that anti-American
moods are most intensive in Turkey, said Ruben Safrastyan April 26,
the head of the Department of Turkey, Institute of History of the
National Academy of Sciences.
He says the survey was conducted in 21 countries of the world,
22 thousand people were questioned. “82 percent are against the
United States,” said Ruben Safrastyan. He says the United States will
recognize the Armenian genocide in the nearest future. The Armenian
expert on Turkey did not mention an exact date but he noticed that
it would happen as soon as the U.S.-Iran conflict is settled. In the
meantime, “the United States is pursuing the isolation of Iran, and
Turkey’s role in this question is big. Now trade is going on between
the United States and Turkey.”

PRIME MINISTER OF KARABAKH SAYS “NO” TO OLIGARCHS
Lragir.am
26 April 06
During the April 26 meeting of the government NKR Prime Minister
Anushavan Danielyan briefly analyzed the peculiarities of development
of the country’s economy. Considering that the prime minister of NKR
rarely makes public speeches, his invitation to ministers to give
briefings more often is quite notable. It should be noted that the
public officials of Karabakh do not like public meetings and answering
questions that sometimes appear in press. Especially the questions
why the loan policy is not transparent, why the effectiveness of
this policy is not analyzed, why the “estimates” of return on tax
are boosted artificially, why agricultural production grows but no
processing factories are founded.
Anushavan Danielyan answered these questions from a new perspective.
By the way, not only did he answer these question, but he also raised
new questions. Particularly considering the budget performance in
2005, the prime minister mentioned that although the receipts grew
by 102 per cent, the budget was performed by 102 per cent. The prime
minister assessed the budget as risky.
Although during the 7 years of office of the present government the
volume of industry has grown significantly, and the prime minister
said the growth was, in fact, thanks to the Copper Factory in Drmbon.
In other words, no other factories were opened. Over the past years,
according to the prime minister, the efforts of the government were
mainly directed at the development of industry and agriculture.
Presently, the emphasis is laid on building. In this context the
prime minister invited the ministers to open factories of building
materials in Karabakh, such as factories of cement and concrete
constructions. Danielyan reminded that this year the volume of building
will reach 8.5 billion drams, whereas the building materials are
still imported from Armenia.
The prime minister was not indifferent towards agriculture either. He
mentioned that Armenia will spend 146 million from the grant of the
Millennium Challenge Corporation on irrigation systems. It means
that soon the crop yield in Armenia will grow several times, and the
production of Karabakh will no longer be competitive. With regard to
this the prime minister criticized all those people who “are against
irrigation projects in Karabakh” (as far as we know, these people
are from the Azat Hayrenik Party). Anushavan Danielyan characterized
these people as “oligarchs” and said they are ready to take any steps
to drop the price of land and “seize all the lands for a song.”
Besides, there is a problem of marketing. Processing factories,
especially wineries are monopolies, said the prime minister. He called
for promoting small wineries through a loan policy. As far as we know,
the first of these oligarchs and monopolists is the co-chair of the
Azat Hayrenik Party, a shareholder of Karabakh Gold Winery Arayik
Harutiunyan, who is said to be the next prime minister.
Finally, the prime minister said the weak link in the Karabakh economy
is communities and communal services. Besides, according to him,
the ministers and local governments of Karabakh are not working in
a team, and each of them is conducting an independent policy, trying
to extract as much money from the budget as possible.

SPEAKER MET WITH PRESIDENT OF NATO PA
Lragir.am
26 April 06
On April 25 in Paris Arthur Baghdasaryan, Speaker of Armenia, met
with the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Claude Leluche.
During the meeting cooperation of the National Assembly of Armenia
with the NATO PA was discussed, namely legislative reforms, exchange
of experience and training.
During the April 26 meeting of Speaker Arthur Baghdasaryan with
Christian Poncelet, President of the Senate of France, the promotion
of parliamentary relations, as well as the bill on the denial of
the genocide, debated by the French parliament and other problems of
mutual interest were discussed.
Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia thanked Christian Poncelet
for receiving one thousand Armenian children who visited France in the
framework of the Armenian year in France and confirmed his invitation
to Poncelet to visit Armenia.
National Assembly Department of Public Relations.

LARISSA ALAVERDYAN PRESENTED THE WHOLE WRETCHEDNESS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Lragir.am
26 April 06
The 2005 report on the activity of the first ombudsman of Armenia
Larissa Alaverdyan was finally presented on April 26 at the Yerevan
Hotel. Larissa Alaverdyan presented the wretchedness of human rights in
Armenia in all its splendor. This was the first show for the benefit
of the first ombudsman, which acquired the form of a 280-page report
on paper.
Listening to Larissa Alaverdyan’s speech, one could have thought that
a revolutionary tribune rather than an ombudsman was speaking.
Larissa Alaverdyan said the violation of human rights is systemic in
Armenia, which is the reason for the lengthiness of the report. The
former ombudsman says even the numerous examples cited in the report
cannot express the upsurge of protest of citizens against violation
of their rights.
“These two years of work showed that all the Armenian officials
refer to human rights as the highest value but their actions show
the opposite. It allows concluding that human rights in Armenia have
a mere declamatory character,” says Larissa Alaverdyan.
“The leadership abuses the government resource, though it claims that
it uses democratic methods,” announced Larissa Alaverdyan.
According to her, the restriction of civil freedoms, violation of the
freedom of speech, electoral fraud, the indifference of the government
towards the most vulnerable groups of the population show that the
leadership is not strong but it abuses power.
“As long as we have such a judiciary system, and as long as we cover
with gold the buildings where the unfair judges sit, we cannot have a
democratic country,” states the former ombudsman Larissa Alaverdyan
after two years of office. She draws a conclusion from her two-year
activity and 280-page-long report that the leadership in Armenia
lacks political will with regard to human rights. However, Larissa
Alaverdyan does not give up, and she advises the same to the society:
do not expect good will from the leadership, use the potential of
the society Armenia is rich in, says the former ombudsman.

STUDENT CONFESSES TO METRO STABBING
By Carl Schreck – Staff Writer
Vladimir Filonov / MT
Moscow Times, Russia
April 25, 2006
Vladimir Akinchev, left, with friends at the cemetery on Monday,
had known Vagan Abramyants since childhood.
Police arrested a high-school student in the weekend killing of an
Armenian teenager on a crowded metro platform at Pushkin Square and
he has confessed to the crime, city prosecutors said Monday.
The circumstances surrounding the killing, however, grew less clear.
Conflicting accounts appeared Monday, including some indicating that
the two boys had been acquainted.
Police detained the 17-year-old boy Sunday, and he confessed to
stabbing Vagan Abramyants, 17, a first-year student at the Moscow
Management Institute, early Saturday evening on the platform of the
Pushkinskaya metro station, City Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Sergei
Marchenko said.
Witnesses said the attackers had shaved heads, black clothes and boots,
police said following the attack. Armenian community leaders called
Abramyants a victim of a hate crime.
Marchenko declined to disclose any details about the investigation,
saying several possible motives were being investigated, including
racism.
According to his companions’ initial statements to police, Abramyants
was going with them to a weekly meeting of the Armenian diaspora being
held at the Itar-Tass building, a short walk away. As they gathered
on the platform around 5 p.m., a train heading to Vykhino entered
the station, and seven young men got off. Abramyants, who was with
11 others, was attacked, witnesses told police.
Interfax, citing police, said one of the men stabbed Abramyants in
the chest and that all of them fled on a departing train. Abramyants
died on the spot.
The investigation took a strange twist Monday when an unidentified law
enforcement source told Gazeta.ru that the suspect — an 11th-grader
at a city high school — knew Abramyants and stabbed him after the two
got into a fight. “It didn’t take long to find the probable killer,
because everyone who was on the platform knew him well,” the source
told Gazeta.ru. “Of course, in order not to turn in their acquaintance,
friends [of both boys] made up a story that some skinheads had attacked
the Armenian student after sprinting out of a metro car.”
According to other reports citing unidentified police sources,
Abramyants and his killer were part of a large group of fans of the
football club Lokomotiv who had met on the platform to go drinking.
At some point, the two teens got into an argument over a girl they
both liked, after which Abramyants was stabbed, the reports said.
Simon Tsaturyan, a lawyer representing Abramyants’ family, called
the police leaks an attempt to “falsify” what he said was “obviously
a racially motivated attack.”
“They are trying to paint this as an everyday crime,” Tsaturyan said
Monday at the Armenian Cemetery in northwest Moscow.
Dozens of Abramyants’ friends and fellow students came to the cemetery
along with hundreds of Armenians to commemorate the 1915 Armenian
genocide. Several declined to be interviewed.
One group of young men described Abramyants as “kind-hearted” and
“a great person.”
“We’d known him since childhood,” said Vladimir Akinchev, a student
at the Moscow Management Institute. “We are in shock.”
Vyacheslav Galustyan, vice president of the Union of Armenians in
Russia, said Abramyants would be buried in the Armenian Cemetery on
Tuesday or Wednesday.
Several people placed flowers at the site of the attack on Monday.

MEETING AT COUNCIL OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
AzerTag, Azerbaijan
April 26 2006
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, in the frame of his first visit
to the United States, on 26 April held a meeting at the Council on
International Relations in Washington.
The former US president’s National Security Advisor general Brent
Scowcroft opened the meeting. He updated on the biography of Ilham
Aliyev, noting that Azerbaijan is one of the strategic partners of the
United States. Speaking of the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh
conflict, he said the Armenian troops had occupied territories of
Azerbaijan. He appraised Azerbaijan’s efforts for settlement of the
conflict and stressed they would and henceforth support Azerbaijan’s
fair position.
President Ilham Aliyev gave a speech. He, in particular, said
Azerbaijan experiences the period of development. He spoke of
hardships in the first years of independence, on the socio-political
situation that led the country to verge of civil war. And when
Heydar Aliyev returned to power in the Republic, it was he who
established socio-political stability in the country and launched
many international projects.
President Aliyev said Azerbaijan attaches strategic importance
to partnership with the United States of America. There is mutual
understanding on cooperation with USA in the field of safety and
economy, he stressed.
The president informed on riches of Azerbaijan and the huge investments
involved in the country’s economy. He also gave detailed information on
the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno Karabakh conflict, its hard sequences
and negotiation process for settlement of the problem.
President Ilham Aliyev answered many questions.
The head of the Azerbaijan State also dwelt on the Azerbaijan-Russia
relations, noting these ties successfully develop. Azerbaijan is on
economic progress and never will become a space of confrontation,
he emphasized.
President Aliyev responded the questions on democratization process
in Azerbaijan, bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and USA and
“orange revolutions”.