ARMENIAN PREMIER TO LEAD ARMENIAN DELEGATION AT 60TH MEETING OF UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY
ARKA News Agency
Aug 30 2005
YEREVAN, August 30. /ARKA/. RA Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan is
to lead the Armenian delegation at the 60th meeting of the UN General
Assembly in New York, USA RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan told
a press conference. He pointed out that the meeting will focus
on UN reforms. According to him, the RA Prime Minister and the
RA Foreign Minister are to make speeches at the meeting. “Armenia
support comprehensive reforms of the UN, which includes issues of
expansion of the UN Security Council. In this respect Armenia support
permanent and non-permanent membership, but at the same time believes
that such important changes must only be made with the consent of the
overwhelming majority of the UN member-states, without any compulsion,”
Oskanyan said. P.T.

3,165 MISSING INDIVIDUALS FROM BOTH SIDES DURING NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT CURRENTLY INCLUDED IN UPDATED LIST
ARKA News Agency
Aug 30 2005
YEREVAN, August 30. /ARKA/. A total of 3,165 missing individuals
from both sides during the Nagorno Karabakh conflict are currently
included in the updated list, press-service of the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported ARKA News Agency. According
to press-release, this list was given to the authorities of Armenia,
Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan in February, 2004. The ICRC continues
its support to both sides of Nagorno Karabakh conflict in their search
for the missed citizens. In January, 2005 the ICRC called on conflict
sides to find out the fate of the missed individuals and proposed
a special plan for receiving the information about them. The ICRC
will continue receive applications from the families of dismissed
individuals in 2006, when the collection of personal data is expected
to start. The ICRC is an organization which main activity is the search
of dismissed people during the war or internal collisions. The staff
of the ICRC also visited 570,000 prisoners in 2004; they registered
data about them to be able to follow their fate during their term of
imprisonment. A.A.

DON’T ALLOW A NEW ARMS RACE IN THE SOUTHERN CAUCASUS
By Sabine Freizer
Daily Star – Lebanon
Aug 31 2005
On August 27, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan met on the
sidelines of the Commonwealth of Independent States summit in Kazan,
Russia, to discuss the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
That brutal war, which killed some 20,000 people and displaced over a
million, has been locked in a shaky cease-fire for a decade, hindering
development throughout the southern Caucasus.
Kazan did not produce miracles – or even headlines. However, it
provided an opportunity for Presidents Robert Kocharian of Armenia
and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, in their second face-to-face meeting
in four months, to encourage their foreign ministers to continue
talks and consider proposals prepared by the Minsk Group of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It was not the
hoped-for ice-breaker, but it was an important step forward in the
resolution of that long-frozen conflict.
Over half a million Azerbaijanis were forcibly displaced by the war and
continue to live in precarious conditions in decrepit camps, unsure of
their future. Nagorno-Karabakh forces backed by Armenia continue to
control seven Azerbaijani districts in addition to Nagorno-Karabakh
itself. Such dramatic and painful consequences have prevented the
two sides from making a deal, with the rhetoric in Baku and Yerevan
effectively on war-footing for 10 years. Since major hostilities
in and around Nagorno-Karabakh halted in 1994, the parties to the
conflict have been unable to sign a single agreement bringing them
closer to a political settlement.
However, for over a year now, the foreign ministers of Armenia and
Azerbaijan have been engaged in a new round of talks, supplemented
by meetings between their presidents. The United States, France and
Russia – the co-chairs of the Minsk Group, responsible for facilitating
negotiations – are expressing rare optimism that a settlement may be
within reach.
An actual peace-building process could begin with the withdrawal from
occupied territories and would most likely end with a legal process
(or a vote), including the participation of Karabakh Armenians and
Karabakh Azeris, to determine the future status of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Somewhere in between, displaced Azeris would start returning home.
Kocharian and Aliyev not only have to agree on these fundamental
points, they need to do so very publicly to begin preparing their
people for a settlement.
Last time, when Armenia and Azerbaijan were close to a deal after
negotiations in Key West, Florida, in 2001, the presidents did not
work on getting public backing for their efforts, and public reaction
to a political compromise was hostile. Former Minsk Group co-chair,
Ambassador Carey Cavanaugh from the United States, summed up Key
West’s failure, saying: “The presidents were ahead of their people.”
The Azerbaijani and Armenian people have been receiving contradictory
messages from their authorities for years. On the one hand, they are
told the conflict should be resolved peacefully; on the other, they
hear there is no room for compromise. While there may have been little
ethnic basis for the war when it started, today official propaganda
has helped insure the build-up of mutual hatred and contempt. The
near complete breakdown in communication and friendship ties between
Armenians and Azerbaijanis, between Karabakh Armenians and Karabakh
Azeris, means that neither population has much understanding of the
other’s grievances and fears.
Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders have long relied on tough talk
at home to boost their domestic approval ratings. Today, as the
opposition in both countries is threatening to take power – after the
November 6 parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan and a crucial vote on
constitutional amendments in Armenia later that month – leaders may
feel it is easier to stick with the proven methods of chauvinism for
keeping their hold on power. Some evidence of this came last month,
when Aliyev announced a 70-percent increase in military spending,
which has, overall, gone up from $135 million in 2003 to $300 million
in 2005, and Armenian officials replied that their army had resources
to match that sum.
An arms race in the Southern Caucasus and a reversion to nationalist
rhetoric will not help. The presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia have
a chance to lead their populations on a road toward a settlement,
and they should act boldly and take it. They should begin by promoting
contacts between their people, as well as between Karabakh Armenians
and Azeris. After Kazan, they can begin a new journey, showing their
people and the world that they are leaders who will not miss this
historical chance to bring peace, prosperity and development to their
divided region.
Sabine Freizer is Caucasus Project Director for the International
Crisis Group (). This commentary was written for
THE DAILY STAR.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

GEMMAYZEH CHANGING: NEW HABITS COME TO AN OLD QUARTER
Not all Beirutis welcome the rise of the city’s newest clubbing district
By Jim Quilty and Leila Diab
Daily Star staff
Daily Star – Lebanon
Aug 31 2005
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series looking at the
changing face of the old Beirut neighborhood of Gemmayzeh.
BEIRUT: “The neighborhood used to be quiet and calm past 9 or 10
p.m.,” recalls Pierre Comati. “I’m not against progress, but we have
had an invasion of people that we don’t know and this has completely
changed the soul of Gemmayzeh.” Comati has been a resident of the
Beirut quarter of Gemmayzeh since 1941. The change at the root of
his anxiety is as global as the symptoms are local.
Nightlife in this town is a moveable feast. When the Civil War divided
their city, Beirutis watered themselves either in Ras Beirut or in
the northern suburbs of Kaslik and Zouq. In the late 1990s, restless
clubbers migrated to Monnot Street, near Beirut’s old Green Line
between West and East Beirut.
For the last couple of years evening migrations have focused on
Gemmayzeh, named after a sycamore tree that was once a landmark here.
Since 2003, boutique-sized spaces – some derelict, others housing
daytime businesses like butchers and magazine shops – have been turned
over to miniature bars and bistros.
The change has been remarkable. In 1998 Gemmayzeh boasted two places
to buy a drink – Qahwat al-Azaz (which has since been renovated
beyond recognition and renamed the “Gemmayzeh Cafe”) and Le Chef,
which has changed only in the death of one of its senior partners.
Today Qahwat al-Azaz and Le Chef share their street with some 15
different cafe-bar-restaurants with that number again preparing to
open. The increase in street traffic has been commensurate.
Recent developments have been conspicuous, but these restaurants are
not the first “outsiders” to enter the neighborhood – this newspaper
has had its offices here since the mid-1990s and young couples have
been drifting in, looking for cheap flats, for years. Changes in
commercial usage can be ephemeral or they may signal more lasting
social changes. Gemmayzeh had identities before its most recent
metamorphosis, and there is evidence to suggest it will acquire others.
Wedged between Mar Maroun and the Ottoman mansions of Sursock Quarter
to the south and Beirut Port to the north, Gemmayzeh is most likely
recognized as the neighborhood on the eastern edge of Solidere’s
downtown reconstruction project.
Place names slide around over time and these days “Gemmayzeh” has
come to refer to Rue Gouraud, named after the general who proclaimed
the birth of “Greater Lebanon” and became the first High Commissioner
of France’s Lebanon Mandate. Before it became “Gouraud” it had a more
functional name – the Tripoli Road.
A nebulously defined quarter, Gemmayzeh is sometimes mentioned in
history books as a predominantly Greek Orthodox mercantile district.
Others argue that, given the fact that the Ottoman tramline ran through
here, it seems unlikely that it ever had the religious uniformity
of Sursock, for instance. Nowadays its older residents are Orthodox,
Maronite and Armenian, the latter seeming to have arrived after World
War I.
“We were the pioneers of the area,” says Salim Hermes, chairman
and general manager of Hermes Electrical store. The company opened
in Gemmayzeh in 1956 and Hermes says his family is famous locally
for erecting the Hermes Building, one of the first buildings in the
neighborhood.
Hermes depicts a quarter largely untouched by changes radiating from
the nearby city centre over the years, something that inspired people
to leave. “The people who used to live here are either very old, or
dead,” he says. “Their children are leaving because they don’t want
to live in a building with no lift, or central heating … This old
neighborhood has known a revolution in its mentality lately because
of the opening of all those restaurants.”
People ate out in Gemmayzeh before 2003, of course, and there seems
no uniformity of opinion among veteran restaurateurs about the
recent changes.
The owner of the 50-year-old Snack Harik, Mrs. Harik, complains that
people who’ve lived in Gemmayzeh for tens of years are now selling
their houses and leaving because daytime street life is extinct.
“Sure they increased the night-time activity,” she says, “but they
killed the movement of the daytime in the process.”
Francois Ephrem Bassil, chef and owner of Gemmayzeh’s landmark Le
Chef Restaurant, is pragmatic about the changes. “Now there are many
restaurants, and it’s better. They’re replacing old places with bars
and restaurants, resulting in more activity at night.”
Apart from the original Qahwat al-Azaz, he says, his was the first
restaurant to open in this area in 1967. “When I opened Le Chef,”
he recalls, “one of my neighbors asked me, ‘Why are you opening a
restaurant? There’s nothing here.'”
Times have changed. The proliferation of new bars and restaurants has
changed the social makeup of the night-time traffic moving through
the neighborhood. This has had its inevitable impact on the business
environment.
Gemmayzeh Mukthtar Elie Nassar estimates that residential and
commercial rents in Gemmayzeh have increased by 2000 percent in the
last three years. He hastens to add, though, that this increase can’t
be attributed to the restaurant boom alone.
Like everyplace else in the country where residency has been stable
since before 1975, Gemmayzeh operates within the “old rent” regime.
Lebanon’s currency was remarkably stable until the 1982 Israeli
invasion, being much closer to parity with the U.S. dollar than it
is today. After 1982 the currency underwent radical devaluation.
Consequently, anyone who made rental arrangements before the currency
started going terribly wrong may still pay at the old rate – LL250.00
per month, for instance. No legal provision has yet been passed
to allow landlords to bring rents up to speed with today’s exchange
rates. Tenants have the prerogative to stay at the old rates until they
leave (landlords can charge new tenants at market rates, of course) or
to renegotiate their rates voluntarily. Solvent landlords sometimes buy
out the old rent contract, effectively paying their tenants to leave.
Most of the rate increases, Nassar says, derive from landlords’
re-negotiating old rental agreements. One of the first of the new
restaurants to open in the quarter (Barouie), for instance, rents a
space that used to go for $100.00 per month. The present tenants pay
$2000.00 a month.
If the rents had been fair to begin with, Nassar continues, the recent
increase would be a mere 100 percent.
In the moral economy of what tenants should have been paying all along,
a rent increase of 100 percent may be modest. In real terms, though,
an opportunity to increase earnings by the margin separating old
rents from market rates – in otherwise sleepy Gemmayzeh, no less –
would be tempting for any landlord. There is a market engine behind
social change in this quarter.

THE NKR PRESIDENT RECEIVES AN EMINENT SPONSOR AND ENTREPRENEUR FROM THE USA
ARKA News Agency
Aug 29 2005
STEPANAKERT, August 29. /ARKA/. The NKR President Arkadi Ghukasyan
received an eminent sponsor and entrepreneur from the USA Albert
Boyajian. According to the NKR President’s Press Service, in
the course of the meeting, in which NKR Prime Minister Anushavan
Danielyan participated, several investment programs were discussed,
in particular, prospects of the establishment in NKR of industrial
enterprises equipped with the latest technologies. Ghukasyan expressed
his gratitude to Boyajian for the implementation of a benevolent
program in NKR and expressed his belief that their close cooperation
in the area of investments will continue. A.H. -0-

SPEAKER OF THE ARMENIAN PARLIAMENT RECEIVES DELEGATION OF
REPRESENTATIVES OF COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF US HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES
ARKA News Agency
Aug 29 2005
YEREVAN, August 29. /ARKA/. Speaker of the Armenian Parliament
Arthur Baghdassaryan received the delegation of the representatives
of the Commission on International Relations of the US House
of Representatives (Matthew McLinn, Samuel Stratman and Paul
Uzberg-Sants) on August 26, 2005, press-service of the RA National
Assembly reports. The US Ambassador to Armenia John Evans has also
participated in this meeting.
The meeting discussed issues of establishing cooperation between the
RA NA and the US Congress, realization of the “Millennium Challenge”
Program, democratization process in Armenia and constitutional reforms.
Baghdassaryan reported that constitutional reforms are implemented in
Armenia, and the RA National Assembly is expected to adopt the draft
amendments to Constitution in the second reading. He also expressed
his gratitude to the US Government for its assistance to Armenia,
which had great importance for Armenia’s economic development, as
well as for including Armenia in the “Millennium Challenge” program.
In their turn, members of the American delegation presented the
“Millennium Challenge” Program in details. They said that a large-scale
work has been implemented but it is not sufficient for the program’s
successful realization.
The both sides pointed to the importance of the reforms in Armenia,
which will promote political and economic development of Armenia,
the regional stability and development of the cooperation. A.A. -0-

HRAZDAN TPP TRANSFERRED TO RUSSIA AS PART OF ARMENIA’S STATE DEBT REPAYMENT HAS PROSPECTS
ARKA News Agency
Aug 29 2005
YEREVAN, August 29. /ARKA/. The Hrazdan Thermo Power Plant (TPP)
transferred to Russia as part of Armenia’s state debt repayment,
normally operates and has prospects, Director of Department of
International Cooperation of the RF Ministry of Industry and Energy
Dmitri Sukhoparov reported ARKA News Agency. He said that it is not
worth the trouble for this object. “There can be “ups and down of
organization” but the fact is that this object operates”, Sukhoparov
said.
The “Hrazdan Energy Company” (HEC) was founded by the Federal Agency
for State Property Management of Russia on November 10, 2005. HEC
includes the property complex of the Hrazdan Thermo Power Plant
transferred to Russia as part of Armenia’s state debt repayment in
the amount of USD 31mln. A.A. -0-
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

MIHRANYAN: MEETING BETWEEN KOCHARYAN, ALIEV WAS DOOMED TO FAILURE
ARKA News Agency
Aug 30 2005
MOSCOW, August 30. /ARKA-RIA Novosti/. Meeting between Armenian
and Azerbaijani Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Ilkham Aliev aimed
at Karabakh conflict settlement was doomed to failure, well-known
political analyst and professor at Moscow State Institute of Foreign
Relations Andranik Mihranyan said in his interview with RIA Novosti.
Viewing the meeting held Aug 27in Kazan as certain progress in
relations, Mihranyan, at the same time, noted that both presidents
realized very well that it is unlikely to reach any accord ahead of
parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan. In his words, Azerbaijan is
on parliamentary election footing now and atmosphere is too tense to
speak about concessions.
Answering the question about what Armenia and Azerbaijan should do
to come to agreement, Mihranyan said conflicting sides themselves
wouldn’t be able to do something. In his opinion, the solution may be
imposed by international community, or status quo will be maintained.
“This may last until one of the sides feels itself strong enough to
solve the problem in military way”, the political analyst says.
In his opinion, enlargement of military budget of Azerbaijan, about
which Aliev spoke recently, is “a political demarche aimed at putting
pressure upon Armenia. Along with that, Mihranyan didn’t rule out
that Azerbaijani authorities are tempted to resort to force to gain
revenge. When they military buildup reach certain level, they can go
to revenge, the professor thinks.
In his opinion, certain progress could be achieved if superpowers
impose some compromising solution to the conflicting sides.
Otherwise, it is difficult for Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities to
explain to people why they agree to make such unbeneficial concessions,
the expert said.
To the question whether Russia is able to activate its mediation
mission in Karabakh conflict settlement, Mihranyan answered that
Russia is already involved in that and pointed out its activity in
the OSCE Minsk Group set up especially for dealing with this problem.
However, he said, today Russia’s capacity leaves no room to do
more than it does now. “Russia’s financial, economic, military and
political capacity is reduced”, Mihranyan said. As an example of that,
he singled out the fact that Russia has lost its role in Georgia and
Azerbaijan. “Russia is no longer taken by many as a country having
clue to Karabakh problem solution. For example, Azerbaijan expects
more from Washington or Brussels”, he said. M.V.

THE NKR PRESIDENT HOLDS AN ANNUAL MEETING WITH THE OFFICERS OF NKR DEFENSE ARMY
ARKA News Agency
Aug 30 2005
STEPANAKERT, August 30. /ARKA/. The NKR President Arkadi Ghukasyan
held an annual meeting with the officers of NKR Defense Army, who
studies in the highest education schools beyond the republic.
According to the Press -Service of the NKR President, Arkadi
Ghukasyan congratulated the graduates with successful completion of
their studies and with returning to their country to continue their
military service. He expressed hope that the knowledge they gained
will contribute to perfection of military skills of the army, ensuring
security of the country, its further accomplishment and development.
The president emphasized that the government had done and would
do everything for the improvement of the conditions of life of the
families of officers. A.H.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

KARABAKH TALKS ON RIGHT TRACK – ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY
By Tigran Liloyan
ITAR-TASS News Agency
August 30, 2005 Tuesday
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said it “gives a positive valuation to the
meeting between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Kazan.”
“The talks on the Nagorno Karabakh settlement are on the right track.
There is no breakthrough, but the evaluation is positive, by and
large,” Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan told a news conference
on Tuesday.
The meeting in Kazan gives an opportunity to the foreign ministers
to continue the work.
The ministers, at the presidents’ instruction, were ordered to continue
meetings, based on the accords reached in Warsaw and Kazan.
The latest round of talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers took place in Moscow on August 24.
The Armenian diplomat did not rule out a new meeting between the
foreign ministers of the two countries and the arrival in the region
of the co-chairs of the OSCE’s Minsk group on Nagorno Karabakh.
“A new field for work is opening,” Oskanyan said.