Assa Irada, Azerbaijan
Nov. 3, 2004
Discussions on Determination of Azeri-Georgian Borders Continue
Azerbaijani and Georgian experts continue discussions on determination
of borders between the two countries, chairman of the State Committee
on Soil and Mapping Garib Mammadov has told journalists.
Discussions on the maps of disputable areas, which were drawn up by
the two countries’ experts earlier, are underway as well. Georgian
experts are expected to visit Azerbaijan by the end of this year to
continue discussions.
Stressing that Keshishdagh, the disputable highest peak situated on
the Azerbaijani-Georgian border, is considered to be Azerbaijan’s
territory, Mammadov noted that it is possible to view the territories
of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia from the peak. `Therefore,
Keshishdagh cannot be considered as a disputable area,’ Mammadov
underlined.

The Delaware County Times, PA
Nov. 3, 2004
Spencer: Some here are bushed after voting for Kerry

Gil Spencer, Times Columnist 11/03/2004

Mano’s Gulf in Chester is pretty much an all-purpose service station.
You can get your brakes done, your emissions tested, your car
inspected, gas, air, food and drink.
And yesterday, for one day only, you could vote for president of the
United States.
All you had to do was slip past the counter, down a short hallway and
into the back room where you’ll be greeted by a poster of Al Pacino as
Scarface.
Say `allo to ma `lil fren — the voting booth.
Working the polls were Judge of Elections Pearl Burton, Republican
Vanessa Doward and Democrat Nancy Alexander.
As of 1 p.m. some 191 people out of approximately 1,800 registered
voters had cast their ballots.
“That’s busy for this area,” said Pearl, “and we have a long way to
go.”
Out front, Bruce Mano was waiting on customers. I asked him if having
the polls there was good for business.
“It’s a little disruptive,” he said, “but what the heck. We’ve been
here 30 years so we do our part.”
Shaheer Madeehah was handing out sample ballots at the door.
“A lot of people come up here and you don’t know whether they’re voting
or getting their car fixed,” he said. But they figure it out.
I was there to do a little exit polling.
Sid Singletary, 72, said he was the second person in line at 7 a.m. He
was still there at 1 p.m. I asked him who he voted for.
“Democrat, 100 percent.” I asked him why.
“To clean up the mess this president has made (in Iraq),” he said. “We
know he can’t bring the soldiers home right now. The war has to be
finished one way or another.”
Win or lose?
“I don’t think I’m worried about losing it,” he smiled. He said
electing Kerry could help encourage France and Germany to send troops
to help out.
Paul Buggs, 71, said he voted for Kerry, too.
“I would like to see him do something about medical for old folks and
something about Iraq. We’re understaffed. We don’t have enough soldiers
to do the job.”
As for France and Germany, he said, “They had better sense than we did.
We got another Vietnam on our hands.”
According to my exit poll numbers, John Kerry was safely ahead in
Chester when I left to go up the road to Wallingford.
At the St. John Chrysostom Elementary School, lines to vote were longer
than anyone could ever remember.
“Never in 21 years has there been a line like this,” said Nirvana
Kacala. “My husband and I have been coming here for 21 years. You come,
you vote, you go.” Not this year.
I asked 72-year-old Charlie Houck how he voted.
“Bush,” he replied.
And what did he expect out of him for the next four years? “About the
same as we got now, God help us.”
His number one voting issue was Iraq.
“Colin Powell was right. You go in there, you own it. So you gotta’
wipe `em out. Kill `em all but six. Use them as pallbearers.”
He didn’t sound too enthusiastic about the situation. I asked him, why
Bush?
“You think the other guy is going to do any better? ..he idea is to get
out of that mess with the least damage. (Bush) has a better handle on
it right now. Kerry don’t know what’s going on.”
Victor Galla had a different take. He voted for Kerry hoping for “a lot
of change.”
He would like the next administration to “bring democracy to other
countries without the use of troops. We should defend ourselves when
necessary but not be so aggressive about it.”
Victor turned 33 yesterday. I turned 50 — old enough to know better.
The most delightful person I talked to was Nirvana. She thinks George
Bush is “very outrageous and extreme.” And “extreme situations,” she
said, “need people like Nirvana to come out.”
An Armenian Christian, she grew up in Lebanon (the country, not the
town). She came to America 28 years ago. Went to Penn. Got married and
raised two children. Her daughter went to Strath Haven High and then to
Swarthmore College. Nirvana rolled her eyes. She said something very
funny but made me promise not to print it. Then she got serious again.
Everyone in the world is mad at us, she said. None of her friends from
Europe or the Middle East will visit her.
“Nobody wants to come,” Nirvana said. “They say get rid of Bush and
we’ll come.”
What if we don’t?
“I will go into a serious depression,” she said. “And get on Prozac.
For the next four years.”
But there’s good news for Nirvana. According to my exit polling data,
Kerry won Delaware County with 85.7 percent of the vote (margin of
error: plus or minus 45 percent).
Republicans should demand a recount.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Baltimore Sun
Nov. 3, 2004
In a subtle light
With great care and little fuss, BMA curator Sona Johnston helps bring
out the detail and harmony in works by Monet contemporary Theodore
Robinson.

By Mary Carole McCauley
Sun Arts Writer
There seems to be a psychic connection between them, the asthmatic,
awkward young painter and the genteel woman who has worked as a museum
curator for four decades.
No matter that the painter, Theodore Robinson, has been dead for more
than 100 years.
Look closely at Robinson’s paintings and you learn something about him,
about painting, about 19th-century France and about Impressionism. But
also, perhaps, you learn something about curator Sona Johnston as well.
That connection is implicit in the quietness, the simplicity, the
reticence of painting after painting. It’s implicit in the way the
moonlight strikes the walls of a farmhouse, drawing attention to their
everyday beauty without making a big fuss about it.
In Monet’s Light: Theodore Robinson at Giverny is the culmination of
Johnston’s career, the past 35 years of which have been spent at the
Baltimore Museum of Art. The show, which brings together 59 of
Robinson’s works and five by his friend, Claude Monet, runs through
Jan. 9 at the BMA.
During a press screening of the exhibit, Johnston stood before an 1892
painting, Moonlight at Giverny, in which the blue of the nighttime sky
and the white walls of a mysterious old building are beckoning, soft
and cool.
“What I love so much is the light,” she said, “the nature of the
shadows in the foreground, the way the roof blends into the hill. You
can sense the atmosphere very distinctly.”
It’s because of qualities like these that Robinson is considered the
leading American Impressionist after Mary Cassatt. In the mid-1970s,
shortly after she curated her first show on Robinson for the BMA,
Johnston began delving into the artist’s unpublished diaries. Her
edited version will be published in a few years.
The diaries depict a man who, though shy and lacking in
self-confidence, was fiercely independent and pursued his art valiantly
until he died prematurely, at age 43, from the asthma that had burdened
him since childhood.
They make it clear, Johnston said, that the bond between Robinson and
Monet, as well as their long conversations on artistic issues,
benefited both men. “The diaries give us glimpses into both of their
lives,” she said. “What wasn’t known before now was the extent of their
friendship.”
In the three decades that she has been perusing the diaries, Johnston
has become the world’s leading expert on Robinson.
“Sona is a remarkable treasure for us,” said Jay Fisher, the BMA’s
chief curator. “She’s an object-centered person, a very visual person.
She has an artist’s sensitivity to materials and the experience of
making art.”
The adjective used most frequently in describing the 65-year-old
Johnston is “lovely.” She’s tall and slender, and her gray hair swoops
up and over her forehead like frozen waves in a frozen sea. It’s not
difficult to imagine her wearing high-buttoned boots or carrying a
parasol.
As a curator, Johnston’s hallmark is a passion for the artwork. She
even treasures the “imperfections” in the paintings – an indistinct
hand in Gathering Plums (1891), the way the corner of The Duck Pond
(1891) deliberately fades away.
“I love the fact that he doesn’t feel the need to go to the edge of the
canvas and finish the painting,” Johnston said.
It is the kind of refined and cultivated – but unexpected – touch that
typifies Johnston’s approach, her colleagues say, the kind of detail
that rewards the attentive observer.
“She’s much more visually oriented than most curators are,” said her
husband, William Johnston, a curator at the Walters Art Museum. “She
likes works that require looking at, studying and thinking about.”
In a Sona Johnston show, you will not find an artwork selected merely
because it fits into a social, cultural or academic hypothesis. Every
piece can justify its place on aesthetic grounds.
“Sona’s not comfortable with a lot of drama,” Fisher said. “Her choices
are more refined and well-orchestrated. She’s not the kind of curator
who will want a wild flurry of wall color in the galleries.”
Colleagues praise Johnston’s meticulous research. It was she who
discovered that Robinson paired compositions that suggest changes in
the time of day, season or weather – just like Monet’s lilac bushes and
his views of the Seine River at Argenteuil.
No one had realized that Robinson’s two canvases of rooftops and
orchards and his two grain-stacks are variations on a theme, because
the artworks in each series had been split up and were hanging in
different museums and private collections.
“It was a major insight,” Johnston said. “These things that I had
thought were copies were different.”
Now reunited, the paintings are shown side by side in the current show
to great effect. Johnston also uncovered archival photographs that are
displayed in the show for the first time, and her captions include
previously unpublished excerpts from the diaries.
After leaving Baltimore, the exhibit will travel to the Phoenix Art
Museum in Arizona, and then the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in
Hartford, Conn.
“It’s a wonderful show,” said Elizabeth Kornhauser, the Wadsworth’s
curator of American paintings and sculpture.
“We’re really excited about bringing it here for our audiences. It’s
visually dazzling, and very bold. To the best of my knowledge, this is
the first occasion that an American curator has had the daring to
showcase an American Impressionist alongside a French Impressionist.
And not just any French Impressionist, but Monet.”
Kornhauser was impressed with the exhibit’s sharp focus on the six
years that Robinson spent in Giverny. “Instead of doing this big,
blockbuster show, this has a quieter, more intellectual focus,” she
said. “The minute you see this show, you know that the curator has had
years of research and study under her belt. When you come away you’ve
learned something, and that isn’t always the case when museums do
Impressionist shows.”
Johnston’s exacting and impassioned scholarship also helped the BMA
acquire rarely lent pieces for the show. Museums are loath to ship
works by such in-demand painters as Monet across the country –
particularly in the post-Sept. 11 atmosphere of heightened security.
“Sona usually gets what she wants, but she doesn’t do it by
aggressiveness,” Fisher said. “She does it by persistence and solid
arguments. There are pictures in this exhibition that the institutions
that own them didn’t want to lend.
“Sona only wanted to include Monets that Robinson actually saw or could
have seen in Giverny. A generic Monet wouldn’t do. And when you have
the greatest expert in the world on Theodore Robinson telling the other
museum that we need these two pictures together to make this particular
point, that there’s not another painting owned by another institution
anywhere in the world that would make that point as well, it’s much
more difficult for them to say no.”
Johnston may be ladylike, but she’s no pushover. Just ask her courtly,
bow-tied husband. Not only is William Johnston the Walters’ associate
director, he’s also the curator of 18th- and 19th-century art. In
addition to mounting shows, both curators also acquire artworks for
their museums, either by buying them outright or through a donation.
Given the similarity of the couple’s jobs, and given the two art
museum’s geographical proximity – not to mention rivalry – there are
times when the Johnstons must have very interesting dinner
conversations. Or, perhaps, very interesting silences.
“There are things we won’t talk about to one another,” Sona Johnston
says. “We’ll never tell the other anything that would affect our
institution in an adverse way.”
After all, art is the earliest love of her life.
Johnston was born in January 1939, the daughter of Armenian immigrants.
One of young Sona’s favorite activities was paging through the art
books belonging to her uncle, a gifted painter and watercolorist who
lived next door. (He later became a dean of the Rhode Island School of
Design.)
While attending Sarah Lawrence College in New York in the late 1950s,
she decided to give painting a whirl, but found that she wasn’t cut out
for the occasionally truculent art then in vogue at the tail end of the
abstract expressionist movement.
“One day, in frustration, one of my teachers came up to me and said, ‘I
want you to paint something ugly,'” she recalled. “I did a really
brutal painting, but then I covered it up with pretty colors.”
After graduating, she began studying art history at New York
University’s Institute of Fine Arts. It was there, during a Friday
afternoon tea, that she noticed a young man wearing a European-cut suit
of dark blue pinstripes. She appreciated the taste necessary to acquire
and value such a suit despite the more casual prevailing fashion.
William Johnston, in turn, had noticed the tall, striking woman with
the shimmering black hair and deep brown eyes.
For a time, they carried on a long-distance romance. Sona left graduate
school to take a job at Boston’s Fine Arts Museum, and William Johnston
went to work in Baltimore for the Walters in 1966. When the couple
married in 1967, Sona moved to Charm City.
She joined the now-defunct Peale Museum, and was recruited by the BMA
in 1970. She has worked there since.
During her tenure, Johnston acquired a pair of Tiffany columns for the
museum “at a rock-bottom price,” Fisher said, and helped open the BMA’s
Jacobs wing, with its collection of Old Masters. She has curated
exhibits and written catalogs on Benjamin West, an American who was
court painter to England’s George III at the time of the Revolutionary
War; on 18th- and 19th-century American painters and on 19th-century
French art. She has worked on shows featuring mosaics dating from A.D.
400 to classic Renaissance sculptures.
“In an increasingly narrow and specialized age, there aren’t many
curators today who have Sona’s breadth and depth,” said the BMA’s
director, Doreen Bolger. “In her elegant and gentle way, she covers a
huge, huge waterfront. She’s as comfortable speaking with the Queen’s
Keeper of Pictures as with a curator in Iowa. She’s pretty
exceptional.”
Even Johnston’s most ardent admirers, however, admit she isn’t suited
for everything.
“Sona could never be a curator of contemporary art,” Fisher said. “She
thinks that art should be beautiful, and you can talk to her up one
side and down the other, and you’ll never convince her otherwise. She
holds her values very strongly, and that’s something to celebrate.”
As beautiful as Robinson’s paintings are, Johnston is the first to
acknowledge that he was less gifted than his groundbreaking friend.
“Monet was a genius,” she said. “Robinson’s paintings are more intimate
than Monet’s. His palette is more muted and he has a less robust way of
painting.”
The exhibit makes a persuasive case for the unique charms of restraint,
the extraordinary gifts it has to confer – whether in a work of art or
in a human being.
——————————————————————————–
Sona Johnston
Age: 65
Birthplace: Cambridge, Mass.
Job: Senior curator of painting and sculpture, Baltimore Museum of Art
Previous posts: Worked in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and at the
former Peale Museum in Baltimore
Education: Bachelor’s degree in art history, Sarah Lawrence College;
graduate studies at New York University’s Institute of Fine Art
Personal: Her husband, William Johnston, is associate director of the
Walters Art Museum. Their son, Fredric, works for the foreign
agriculture service of the USDA.
Greatest non-work passion: Her three cats: Fiona, Fauna and Domino
——————————————————————————–
Exhibit
What: In Monet’s Light: Theodore Robinson at Giverny
Where: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive
When: through Jan. 9. The museum is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Wednesday-Friday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. the
first Thursday of every month
Admission: $12; $10 for senior citizens, college students and groups of
12 or more; $6 for children 6-18; free for children 5 and younger.
Includes museum admission and audio tour.
Tickets sold: At the BMA box office or through Ticketmaster at
410-547-7328 and at
Information: 410-396-7100 or visit

ArmenPress
Nov. 3, 2004
HOME-MADE VINEGAR PROVES EFFECTIVE IN CONTROLLING WEEDS
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS: The Marketing Assistant Project
(MAP), administered by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Yerevan
office, said two groups of fresh herb growers recently participated in
an experiment that has profound implications for improving crop
management.
They sprayed their own commonly made household vinegar (acidic acid)
on weeds in their plots of tarragon and within one hour saw dramatic
results: the weeds that they normally must remove by hand hoeing every
10 days were rapidly dying.
“The results are simply dramatic” was the reaction of Alvard
Tovmasyan and the 10 women of Nalbandian Village who witnessed the
demonstration. The participants in Mrgashat Village echoed the same
reaction. Four concentrations of vinegar were demonstrated: 6%, 10 %,
15%, and 20%.
Dr. Sergey Yeritsyan of the Armenian Agricultural Academy (AAA)
carefully prepared them. Growers under the supervision of Dr. Hrant
Terlemezyan did the actual spraying. Nuneh Sarukhanyan of Agrogitaspir
served as extension leader for the project.
According to Sarukhanyan, the random plot findings showed that
vinegar concentrations of 15% and 20% had the most immediate effect on
weeds. However, spray drift caused slight damage to the tarragon. The
10% and homemade 6% concentrated vinegar worked slower and also proved
effective, however they caused no damage to the tarragon crop.
The idea for the demonstration came from Paul Sommers and Felix
Vardarian of USDA/MAP. “The idea was to validate research conducted by
the USDA National Research Center at Beltsville under Armenian
conditions,” said Mr. Sommers.” Vinegar is bio-safe, low cost, and is
traditionally made by farm families. This successful exercise has great
implications for reducing one of the most labor demanding and costly
aspects of growing quality crops-weeds.

ArmenPress
Nov. 3, 2004
ARMENIAN SECURITIES COMMISSION TO JOIN THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian Securities Commission
plans to join next year the International Organization of Securities
Commissions. According to the Securities Commission chairman Edward
Muradian, the Commission was supposed to join the Organization this
year, but the absence of a relevant provision in the Law on Securities
postponed the membership.
He said members of the organization have to exchange information
concerning specific instances of breaches of law, which he said is of
key importance in fighting money laundering and international
terrorism.
He said the Armenian Securities Commission was not entitled to
collect and disseminate such information, but a package of amendments,
approved by the parliament in the second reading, that will come into
force in 2005, will give it such authority.
He said the membership will mean that Armenian Securities Commission
meets international requirements.

ArmenPress
Nov. 3, 2004
RUSSIAN ARMENIANS INDIFFERENT TO AGREEMENT ON THEIR VOLUNTEER RETURN
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 3, ARMENPRESS: A senior official of the
government-affiliated department for refugees and migration, said to
Armenpress that no Russia-based Armenian has responded yet to a
bilateral government agreement on volunteer return of Russian Armenians
back to home and Russians from Armenia to Russia.
Irina Davtian, head of a division dealing with migration policy
development, said the agreement was supposed to mainly apply to
Armenians who emigrated in mass to Russia in the recent decade, as
there are virtually no Russian citizens living here on a permanent
basis.
She explained the reluctance of Russian Armenians to come back home
by the fact that the agreement in question applies to those who are
officially registered by the authorities and “it would be naive to
expect them who are close to be granted Russian citizenship to come
back to Armenia.”
Based on this, she said, the department is working now to broaden
the frameworks of the agreement and to extend it to Armenians with no
official status in Russia, who make the majority of Armenian immigrants
in Russia and who are most likely to come back. She also said the
Russian side was informed about their intention.
The agreement exempts re-settlers from paying customs duties and
other taxes when bringing their property.

Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Nov. 3, 2004
Comment: In Search of a Solution
It is in the interests of both Russia and the European Union to solve a
problem knocking at both their doors.
By Nicholas Whyte in Brussels (BCR No 524, 03-Nov-04)
Moldova is soon to become one of the European Union’s newest
neighbours. With the expected entry of Romania in 2007, the EU will
share a long frontier with the poorest country in Europe, which suffers
from an uneasy sense of identity and uncertain borders.
The unrecognised separatist region of Transdniester has been out of the
control of Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, since 1992 and is essentially a
mafia-run fiefdom which survives thanks only to criminal profits and
support from certain circles in Russia and Ukraine – and the security
presence of the 14th Russian Army.
The region is a prime location for money laundering and the production
and illegal export of weapons. Firearms produced in and trafficked from
Transdniester are said to lack serial numbers, making them untraceable
and therefore ideal for organised crime.
In the current situation, such activities can be conducted in and from
Transdniester very easily and with impunity, as international law
enforcement bodies are not allowed there, and international
governmental and non-governmental organisations are unable to operate
normally within its borders.
As a result, it is difficult to provide training for officials or
provide expertise on legislation, awareness-raising campaigns and
witness protection programmes relating to trafficking issues when the
authorities are not recognised internationally and are resistant to
international pressure and intervention.
The civil war in Moldova was relatively mild by post-Soviet standards
when you consider the Georgian civil war, the Armenian-Azerbaijani war
over Nagorny Karabakh, or the decade of implosion in Chechnya. But this
does not make a long-term solution any easier to find.
A Russian attempt to break the deadlock, the so-called Kozak Memorandum
of November 2003, foundered on two issues: the constitutional set-up of
a reunited Moldovan state, and Russia’s continued military presence in
Transdniester.
Russian officials admitted afterwards that their negotiator Dmitry
Kozak – an adviser to President Vladimir Putin – failed to get the
necessary buy-in to the plan from Washington and the EU via the
existing OSCE negotiating mechanism.
However, the EU’s new European Neighbourhood Policy – which is designed
to improve stability and security in areas soon to border on the EU
following its expansion – has raised expectations in Moldova.
The European Commission will shortly be publishing an Action Plan for
the country, which should contain clear benchmarks for the country for
development of democracy, rule of law and human rights. After an
initial period when Chisinau got a relatively good bill of health on
this score, the 2003 local elections and continuing state harassment of
journalists and media indicate a worrying trend.
A regime of visa sanctions against the Transdniestrian leadership,
imposed in early 2003 in frustration with their failure to move the
peace process forward, was intensified in July 2004 in reaction to
Tiraspol’s harassment of Moldovan-language schools.
Tensions also rose in the divided town of Tighina/Bendery in autumn
2004, when Transdniestrian militia seized control of a vital railway
station.
The EU has a clear interest in helping to clean up the serious problems
caused by poverty and endemic crime in Moldova, as both threaten to
bring even greater problems with Romania’s succession in perhaps fewer
than three years’ time.
And whether or not one believes Chisinau’s claims that Transdniestrian
arms are flowing to Caucasian rebels, it surely cannot be in Russia’s
long-term interests to allow the dispute to continue to fester.
At present, international actors are unwilling to invest resources in
Moldova; the painful memory of last year’s botched Kozak plan lingers.
What is needed is a joint EU-Russia effort to find a solution, in the
context of the European Neighbourhood Policy and also of Russian’s 1999
commitment to withdraw its troops and equipment from Moldova, and
specifically from Transdniestria.
The EU’s designated new external relations commissioner, Benita
Ferrero-Waldner, has had some experience of the issue from her time as
Chair-in-office of the OSCE in 2000.
Perhaps Brussels and Moscow will find the necessary time and energy to
resolve this comparatively minor problem soon.
Nicholas Whyte is Europe Programme Director of the International Crisis
Group in Brussels.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
November 3, 2004 Wednesday
Railway traffic through Georgia to be reopened
By Yulia Bagrysheva
MOSCOW
Transport ministers of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan have fully
supported a project of reopening the through traffic on the
Trans-Caucasus railway, Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said.
PRIME-TASS quoted him as saying at a news briefing on Wednesday that
Russia, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan would set up an operator
company for the restoration and maintenance of the railway link.
Russian Railways will join the company.
Levitin said bridges would be built at some segments of the railway and
a 200-kilometre stretch of it renovated. A part of the railway is mined
until now, and many bridges are destroyed.
The traffic through Georgia was stopped in August 1992 because of the
Georgian-Abkhazian conflict.
After the end of a military phase of it, Russia and Armenia repeatedly
raised the question of traffic resumption, Levitin said.
The Russian and Georgian presidents signed a statement in Sochi in
March 2003 on Georgian-Abkhazian settlement that in particular
envisions setting up a working group on the restoration of the railway
traffic through Abkhazia.
“The presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia fully support the
idea of restoring the through transport link,” Levitin said.

RIA Novosti
November 03, 2004
RUSSIA, TRANSCAUCASIAN COUNTRIES WANT TO RESTORE RAILROAD OPERATION IN
CAUCASUS
MOSCOW, Nov 3 (RIA Novosti’s Yelena Fyodorova) – Russia, Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan intend to establish an operator company to
restore and service the Transcaucasian railroad, Russian Transportation
Minister Igor Levitin said at a Wednesday press conference in Moscow.
In his words, this decision was made after the talks with the
leadership of three Transcaucasian countries. “Three presidents
confirmed their wish that transportation bodies should suggest a scheme
of an operator company’s establishment,” said Mr. Levitin.
He explained that the political decision on the restoration of a
through railway movement in the Caucasus was difficult to make now,
that’s why it was decided to start from economic issues.
“A scheme of establishing an operator company which will take up the
functions of controlling traffic was proposed,” said Mr. Levitin. He
added that open joint-stock company Russian Railways would join the new
company on the Russian part.
Mr. Levitin said that in many respects, the consent of the
Transcaucasian republics’ presidents to restoration of the through
railway movement was defined by the very important geopolitical
significance of this project. The case is that a project codenamed
Silky Way – the construction of a railway via China, Kazakhstan finally
reaching Turkey – is being realized now.
Mr. Levitin said the volume of transit on the Transcaucasian railroad
in Soviet times was up to 15 million tons of cargoes annually.
Mr. Levitin recalled that movement on the Transcaucasian railroad was
suspended in 1990 due to events in Abkhazia (a self-proclaimed republic
on Georgian territory). As a result of warfare, many sections of the
railroad were damaged, and many sections of the railway bed were not
demined.
“Georgia is to give the Russian side documents on the state of the
railroad on its territory and assess the volume of necessary investment
until the end of November,” said the Transportation minister. Only
after that will Russia make the decision to participate in the
restoration of the railroad, he emphasized.
In the minister’s opinion, the consortium which is being created will
also address the issues of restoration of destroyed sections of the
Transcaucasian railroad. The four states will support this project with
loans. Besides, a banking consortium will be created to finance the
project, said Mr. Levitin.
He said Georgia was interested in integration of a Georgian airline
with a Russian one.
The minister recalled that Aeroflot was considering the issue on the
integration with the Georgian airline.
Mr. Levitin said this issue was complicated with Georgian airlines’
debt for aeronavigation servicing in Russia’s airspace.

Prime-Tass English-language Business Newswire
November 3, 2004
Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan to restore railway traffic
MOSCOW, Nov 3 (Prime-Tass) — Russia, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan
have approved restoring through traffic along the Caucasus railway,
Russia’s Transportation Ministry Igor Levitin said at a briefing
Wednesday.
Through traffic was interrupted in August 1992 following the
Georgian-Abkhazia conflict.
The through traffic is to be organized by the national railway
operators of each country, Levitin said
The state-owned company Russian Railways is to act as the operator for
Russia, he added.
Levitin also said that building bridges for some stretches of the
railway might be necessary, as well as relaying 200 kilometers of
track. He did not elaborate. End