ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
July 21, 2004 Wednesday

NATO technical centre opens in Yerevan

By Tigran Liloyan

YEREVAN

NATO will provide free satellite and Internet communication to a
number of scientific and educational centres of Armenia, thanks to a
technical centre for realization of the NATO programme Virtual Silk
Road that opened in the Armenian capital on Wednesday.

Besides Armenia, science-education institutions of Azerbaijan,
Georgia, as well as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan will also get free equipment and satellite and
Internet communication.

The executive director of the Arena Company, which is acting as NATO
partner in Armenia, Grigor Babayan, said the programme is designed
for three years and costs 2.5 million U.S. dollars. Armenia’s share
is about 500,000 dollars.

Babayan said Arena would provide with Internet communication Yerevan
State University within the framework of the NATO programme, as well
as Yerevan Physics Institute, the office of the U.N. development
programme mission and several other centres.

The Arena director said 33 more institutions of the country would be
connected to the web in the coming year.