JJA NEGOTIATES MERGER WITH JCA
Armenpress
YEREVAN, AUGUST 29, ARMENPRESS: JJA (Jacobs Jewelry Armenia) is
negotiating a merger with Jewelry Company of Armenia (JCA), Armenian
trade and economic development ministry said. JJA reported a 485
percent growth for the first half of this year from a year ago. JJA
was established in 2003 by Diamond Company of Armenia (DCA) together
with a Lebanese and a Thai companies. It employs now 42 people. JCA was
established by DCA chairman Gagik Abrahamian and a Swiss businessman,
Toros Sakerian.

ORRAN STARTS ONE-MONTH EVENT FOR DESTITUTE CHILDREN AND ELDERLY POPULATION
Armenpress
Aug 29, 2005
YEREVAN, AUGUST 29, ARMENPRESS: Orran, a benevolent non-governmental
organization said in a press release that September 1, 2005 will mark the
beginning of a one-month event at the Armenia Mariott Hotel in Yerevan aimed
at raising awareness about and funds for Armenia’s destitute children and
elderly population.
In the month of September, the Armenia Marriott will give its guests the
opportunity to interact with and contribute to the future of the children
and elderly of Orran, a benevolent non-governmental organization formed five
years ago in Yerevan by Raffi and Armine K. Hovhanesian. In that time, Orran
has taken more than 100 children off the streets, providing them with food,
clothing, psychological services, tutoring, and an avenue for success. It
has embraced also 140 elderly.
The partnership of Orran and the Armenia Marriott Hotel in September will
be a unique attempt at intensifying the fight against destitution and
begging on Yerevan’s streets. On Wednesdays at 5pm, the children of Orran
will perform traditional Armenian songs and dances at the entrance of the
hotel. At this venue, the hotel guests will be able to interact with the
children and elderly, as well as purchase various arts and crafts the
children have made themselves. When paying for the check at the hotel’s Cafe
or restaurants, or checking out of the hotel, the guests will also be
afforded the opportunity to contribute. Their contributions will be
generously matched by Orran’s principal benefactors Mr. and Mrs. Krikor and
Anna Krikorian.
In a non-intrusive yet compelling approach, the Armenia Marriott and
Orran hope to succeed in this powerful collaboration of business and
benevolence. The Armenia Marriott Hotel general manager Katrin Hentszel
says, “This is not merely a duty but also a privilege for our hotel. The
problem of children and elderly begging on the street-and the more basic
problem of poverty-is something that needs to be solved. The Armenia
Marriott is happy to be working with the professional staff and truly
delightful beneficiaries of Orran to come one step closer to the solution.”
Orran’s founder Armine K. Hovhanesian notes, “The group effort that the
Armenia Marriott and Orran are displaying here has dual importance. In
itself, it means raising real awareness about and making real contributions
toward the future of Armenia’s children and elderly. As a symbol, it
represents the power and possibilities of collective action and goodwill.”

10 DAYS IN USA
A1+
| 20:53:07 | 29-08-2005 | Official |
The RA NA President Arthur Baghdarasyan will be in USA from August
31till September 9 on an official visit to participate in the
Parliament Presidents World Summit and to meet the representatives
of the US legislative and execute powers.
Arthur Baghdasaryan will have many meetings in the US Congress,
in the State Secretariat, and the White House. In the Center for
Strategic International Investigations he will meet American experts.
In Washington the President of the Armenian Parliament will also
have meetings with the US Congress President, the assistants of the
US State Secretary, head of the Democratic Programs, heads of the US
Republican and Democratic parties, senators and other political bodies.

DISCUSSING THE CONSTITUTION
A1+
| 20:46:47 | 29-08-2005 | Politics |
Today the National Assembly discussed the Draft Constitution in a
special session. During the discussion one of the most disputable
issues was the immunity of the President. According to the draft,
“The President of Armenia cannot be persecuted either in the period
of governing or after it for actions proceeding from his status”. But
the President of Armenia can be impeached because of high treason or
another grave crime.
Aram Sargsyan, deputy of the Justice bloc mentioned that all the
actions of the President are represented as “proceeding from his
status”, that is many decisions not favorable for the nation can be
made for which no one can call the President to responsibility.
Manouk Gasparyan announced that if his two demands are accepted, he
will act as defender of the draft Constitution. One of the demands
was about the article of the President’s immunity, and the other was
about the indirect election of the Yerevan mayor.
“If the Yerevan mayor must be elected by the Yerevan alderman, it is
better for the President to appoint him”, said Manouk Gasparyan.
Tigran Torosyan mentioned that the coalition does not want the Yerevan
mayor to be appointed.
All the issues which were not cleared up by the Constitution were
explained by Tigran Torosyan that “Not everything must be regulated
with documents; there is the concept of political culture, within
the framework of which these issues must be solved”.

SLOVENE OSCE CHIEF DISCUSSES SOLUTIONS TO NAGORNYY KARABAKH CONFLICT
STA news agency
29 Aug 05
Ljubljana, 29 August: Foreign Minister and OSCE chairman Dimitrij
Rupel met Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, his personal envoy for Nagornyy
Karabakh, and the co-chairs of the US-Russia-France group, which
deals with the conflict, the ministry said in Monday’s [29 August]
press release.
According to the press release, Rupel’s guests briefed him on the
results of their Saturday meeting with Armenian President Robert
Kocharyan and his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev.
The situation and possible solutions to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict
over the Nagornyy Karabakh region topped the agenda at the Saturday
meeting, which took place after the summit of the Commonwealth of
Independent States in the Russian city of Kazan.
At today’s meeting, Rupel urged both sides to use the opportunity
and find a compromise solution for Nagornyy Karabakh, the ethnic
Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. This was also an opportunity for
Rupel to prepare for the visit to Azerbaijan and Armenia which is
scheduled for next week. [Passage omitted]

FRANCE AND BELGIUM PUBLISH LIST OF AIR CARRIERS BANNED FROM THEIR TERRITORY
SOPHIE NICHOLSON
AP Worldstream; Aug 29, 2005
France and Belgium have issued blacklists of airlines prohibited from
using their airports, in an attempt to allay public fears about flying
after a recent series of deadly crashes.
The French list comprises six companies from the U.S. Virgin Islands,
Thailand, North Korea, Mozambique and Liberia. Belgium’s list released
Monday includes nine airlines from Egypt, Armenia, Congo, Libya,
Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Ukraine and the Central African Republic.
Swiss civil aviation officials said they planned to release a similar
list Thursday.
Proposals for a European blacklist were still working their way
through lawmaking institutions, prompting individual countries to
take action in the meantime.
Starting Sept. 8, different European Union member states will meet in
Brussels to work on harmonizing rules to ban or suspend a company’s
flights, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said Monday.
Maxime Coffin, test director at the French civil aviation authority,
DGAC, said he hoped the French list would speed up Europe’s
efforts. Though all the airlines had been banned in recent years,
France had never before made a blacklist public.
“We also hope this list will persuade foreign companies who want to
come to France to be more rigorous,” Coffin told a news conference.
Thailand’s Phuket Airways, one of the airlines banned in France,
demanded to know what criteria France used to judge it.
“I really don’t understand what is the meaning of unsafe. Unsafe
for what? Unsafe for operations or unsafe for what? Because we have
never had a serious incident or accident, so I would like to ask back
to the authorities what is the meaning of unsafe?” Captain Chawanit
Chiamcharoenvut, executive vice president of Phuket Air, said at the
company office in Bangkok.
Safety specialists said, however, that because air accidents are
relatively rare, airline records failed to tell the whole story.
In France, many questioned the reliability of the blacklists.
“Publishing lists is completely ineffective,” said Marc Chernet,
president of an association for victims of a Flash Airlines plane
crash in the Red Sea in June 2004. The plane, heading to Paris,
crashed after taking off from Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, killing 148
people, mostly French tourists.
He suggested the French blacklist be replaced with a system of
“security grades” to rank airlines on their overall safety.
“A company that is unable to fly can easily make an agreement to fly
in another company’s name,” he told Europe-1 radio.
Other European countries have rejected national blacklists. The
Netherlands, for example, says such a move should be the result of
a joint effort by the 25 EU countries.
“France and Belgium have announced their decision to publish a
blacklist of unsafe airlines on the Internet. The Netherlands doesn’t
support that,” the Dutch Transport Ministry said in a statement
Monday. Instead, “it wants the European Commission to come up with
a list of airlines that would be banned from the EU air space.”
The French and Belgian measures were announced after a series of five
aviation accidents in the past few months, including one involving a
Colombian-registered charter that crashed in Venezuela, killing 152
French citizens from the Caribbean island of Martinique.
On Saturday, a charter flight from Turkish company Fly Air was
grounded at Paris’ Roissy airport with tire problems and a small fuel
leak. Passengers were either reimbursed or flown out on a different
plane Monday. That company was not on France’s blacklist.
France’s list of banned airlines is: Air Koryo of North Korea; Air
St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands; International Air Services of
Liberia; Thailand’s Phuket Airlines; and Linhas Aereas de Mocambique
and Transairways, both from Mozambique.
On the Belgian list were Africa Lines of the Central African Republic;
Air Memphis from Egypt; Air Van Airlines of Armenia; Central Air
Express from Congo; Libya’s ICTTPW; International Air Tours Limited
from Nigeria; Johnsons Air Limited of Ghana; Silverback Cargo
Freighters from Rwanda; and South Airlines of Ukraine.
The U.S. has a slightly different system that focuses on countries
rather than airlines, and uses aviation safety standards set by
the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations
agency headquartered in Montreal. Twenty-six of the 100 countries
that have been assessed do not meet ICAO standards, most in Africa,
South America and the Caribbean.

RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTER TO OBSERVE CIS AIR DEFENCE EXERCISES
Interfax-AVN military news agency website, Moscow
29 Aug 05
Moscow, 29 August: Russian Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov left for
Astrakhan by air today to observe the active stage of the Combat
Commonwealth-2005, the coalition exercises of the CIS Unified Air
Defence System.
Approximately 2,000 servicemen, more than 40 aircraft and also the
S-300, S-125 and S-75 anti-aircraft missile complexes and systems are
taking part in the exercises, being held at the Ashuluk test range,
Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force Army Gen Vladimir Mikhaylov
has told Interfax-AVN news agency.
“Questions of interaction between anti-aircraft missile troops and
radio-technical troops and also aviation will be practised in the
course of the exercises,” Mikhaylov said.
Anti-aircraft complexes will carry out live firing during the
exercises, he said. “Frontal aviation will carry out ground-attack
bombing raids against the notional enemy’s ground troops, whilst
the fighter aviation will destroy cruise missiles in mid-air,” the
commander-in-chief said.
“Subunits of the air forces and air defence forces from Armenia,
Belarus, Russia and Tajikistan will be active at the Ashuluk test
range today and tomorrow, because other CIS countries have already
gone through exercises before, in July and at the start of August,”
the general said.
Mikhaylov, who is in charge of the exercises, noted that heads of
defence ministries of CIS member countries and heads of a number of
defence enterprises had been invited to the exercises.

TURKISH CYPRIOT EX-LEADER THANKS AZERBAIJAN FOR FRIENDSHIP
Lider TV, Baku
29 Aug 05
A delegation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus led by [former
president] Rauf Denktas and [deputy prime minister] Serdar Denktas
is visiting Azerbaijan. They have visited the Martyrs’ Avenue and
the Avenue of Honour.
It is wrong to compare the Nagornyy Karabakh problem with the Northern
Cyprus issue. According to the author of this statement and the former
president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Rauf Denktas,
Greece entered Cyprus in 1963 in order to occupy the land of the two
peoples. Eleven years later, Turkey came and saved us from the yoke.
If the fraternal country [Turkey] had helped and liberated your
land when Karabakh was being occupied, nobody could have called it
an occupier. True, Greece wants to exert influence on Azerbaijan to
prevent it from establishing ties with Northern Cyprus, but Azerbaijan
has embraced us without listening to them. We thank you for this.

THE JOINT SHIELD
by Vladimir Fedosenko
Rossiiiskaya Gazeta (supplement to the Soyuz Belarus-Rossia issue),
August 25, 2005, p. 3
Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
August 29, 2005, Monday
It’s already the fourth day of the Combat Commonwealth-2005 joint
exercise, which recently began on the Ashuluk firing range in Russia.
Colonel Alexander Drobyshevskky, chief of the press service of
the Russian Air Force, said that representatives of the Russian,
Belarusian, Tajik and Armenian armies are involved. Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan conducted a similar exercise a bit earlier, which is why
they decided to send their observers instead of anti-aircraft units.
Four branches of the Air Force participate in Combat Commonwealth for
the first time over the ten-year history of this exercise: fighters,
assault planes, bombers and intelligence planes. Fighters simulate
dogfights, and the Su-25 assault planes and the Su-24 bombers will
deliver strikes on ground-based targets. (…)
Over 2,000 servicemen and the S-300, S-125 and S-75 anti-aircraft
complexes, the Su-24 bombers, the Su-25 assault planes, the Su-27,
MiG-29 and MiG-31 fighters, and the A-50 long-range radio-locating
surveillance plane are involved in the exercise.
The Russian and Belarusian defense ministers reached an agreement to
supply the S-300 PMU2 anti-aircraft complexes to Minsk (at present
the Belarusian Army uses the obsolete S-300 PS complexes). (…)
The OSA-1T anti-aircraft complex, which was tested on the Domanovo
firing range of the Belarusian Air Force, participates in the exercise
in Ashuluk. A representative of the Tetraedr scientific-industrial
enterprise, which modernized this complex, stated that the OSA-1T is
equipped with a principally new guidance system.
It should be noted that the exercise in Ashuluk is a serious test of
the Russian-Belarusian regional anti-aircraft system. The results of
the exercise will be finalized on August 30. (…)
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov stated that the exercise is
a success. He noted that Russian and Belarusian units show a high
level of integration. He said that Russian and Belarusian units have
created a joint logistics system.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NO KARABAKH ACCORD ANNOUNCED AFTER ARMENIAN-AZERI SUMMIT
Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Aug 29 2005
Armenia and Azerbaijan have made contradictory statements on their
presidents’ weekend meeting in Russia which international mediators
hoped will mark a turning point in their protracted search for a
solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Presidents Robert Kocharian and Ilham Aliev did not speak to
journalists after their talks in the Russian city of Kazan on Saturday
and it is not known if they reached any formal or informal agreements
on Karabakh. Reports from Kazan said the two leaders conferred in
a tete-a-tete format for an hour before being joined by French,
Russian and U.S. diplomats spearheading the peace process.
Kocharian, according to his spokesman Victor Soghomonian, came away
satisfied from the meeting held on the sidelines of a summit of the
Commonwealth of Independent States. “The Armenian side assesses the
meeting in Kazan positively and considers it a positive development in
the negotiating process,” the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Soghomonian
as saying.
The official added that Foreign Ministers Elmar Mammadyarov of
Azerbaijan and Vartan Oskanian of Armenia will continue that process
“based on the agreements reached in Kazan.” He did not say what those
agreements are.
“In general, I cannot say that there has been any major progress
or breakthrough,” Mammadyarov said for his part, according to the
Azerbaijani ANS television. “We did not reach any agreement.”
“I think that we, both Armenia and Azerbaijan, need a couple of weeks
to analyze the thoughts voiced by the two sides and think what the
results may be and whether we are prepared for any progress or not,”
he added.
Mammadyarov and Oskanian held talks in Moscow earlier in the week to
prepare for the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit and appeared satisfied
with their results. Highlighting the importance of the Kazan meeting,
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Aliev and Kocharian
on Thursday to urge them to make mutual concessions that will pave
the way for a Karabakh peace deal.
Diplomatic sources in Yerevan told RFE/RL last month that the parties
have already agreed on the key points of a peace deal that could be
formalized as early as this year or at the beginning of next. They
said it is based on the idea of a referendum in which the Karabakh
Armenians will decide whether they want to be independent, become a
part of Armenia or return under Azerbaijani rule. Speaking to RFE/RL
in Moscow last week, Mammadyarov admitted that such a peace formula
is being discussed by the parties.
Regional observers believe that Aliev and Kocharian will not announce
any compromise deals until November which will see parliamentary
elections in Azerbaijan and a constitutional referendum in Armenia.
It is widely assumed that opposition groups in both countries would
exploit unpopular concessions on Karabakh in their struggle against
the ruling regimes.
The Karabakh peace process has always been highly confidential.
Kocharian and Aliev’s late predecessor and father Heydar, for example,
did not announce any agreements after a meeting in Paris in March
2001. But Armenian officials claimed afterward that the two presidents
agreed on the key principles of a peace accord that nearly ended the
bitter dispute.