ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 24, 2005 Saturday

Armenians living in Georgia demand autonomy for Javakheti district

By Tengiz Pachkoria

TBILISI

Organizations of ethnic Armenians living in southern Georgia have
asked the country’s leadership to consider “a federal structure for
Georgia” and to provide “the status of an autonomous territory” for
Javakheti district.

The appeal was issued at a congress of Armenian organizations of the
Samtskhe-Javakheti region that was held in the town of Akhalkalaki
Saturday.

Ethnic Armenians make up the majority of population in two of the
region’s five districts – Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda, although they
all also live in other parts of the Samtskhe-Javakheti territory.

The congress brought together about 300 activists of the
organizations Virk, Javakh and Young People’s Union, who discussed a
bill wherein the Georgian parliament proposed self-government for
various parts of the country.

The ethnic Armenian activists also asked the Georgian government to
speed up the scrutiny of job-placement opportunities for local
population, since many people are going to lose jobs after Russia
closes a military base in Akhalkalaki.

“Georgian authorities have taken a range of important steps recently
to solve social and economic problems of this territory and to
rehabilitate roads, but they solved far from all the problems,
including jobs for the people,” participants in the forum said.

“The situation with jobs may aggravate after the pullout of the
Russian military base [Russia is due to close its bases in Batumi and
Akhalkalaki in 2008 – Itar-Tass] where thousands of local residents
are working now,” one of the speakers said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress