TO RE-ESTABLISH MONOPOLY RIGHTS OF MATENADARAN, A NUMBER OF NGOS INTEND TO PUT DIRECTORATE ON TRIAL

Noyan Tapan
May 17 2007

YEREVAN, MAY 17, NOYAN TAPAN. The statement of Sen Arevshatian,
the Director of the Yerevan Mesrop Mashtots Scientific-Research
Institute-Matenadaran (repository of ancient manuscripts) of Old
Manuscripts that the agreement signed on April 13 with the Hill Museum
-Library of Manuscrips attached to the Saint John Monastery-University
of the U.S. State of Minnesota was recognized invalid, did not
correspond to reality. Pushkin Serobian, the Chairman of the Vernatun
public organization informed journalists about it during the May 16
discussion, quoting the statement made recently by the RA Minister
of Education and Science.

To recap, it is envisaged according to that agreement to start from
September, 2007, the program of digitalization of manuscripts kept
at the Matenadaran and creation of computer data bases.

P. Serobian mentioned that only the RA government, as the only
owner of the Matenadaran values, is competent to sign a similar
document. Besides, he considered illegal and inadmissible all
the principles of the agreement. In P. Serobian’s words, though
S. Arevshatian stated that it is an agreement not obliging anything to
the Armenian side, but it was found out in the consequence of study
of that document that the American side equally shares the rights on
management of the Matenadaran values.

By the way, P. Serobian also mentioned that still 10 years ago an
American Armenian benefactor bequeathed 100 thousand U.S. dollars to
the Matendaran.

But that money, in his words, "was debited not on the Matenadaran
bank account but on the Director’s personal account."

The discussion participants made a decision to address to the RA
Government with a proposal to state the mentioned agreement invalid as
well as to the Prosecutor’s Office with a demand to bring a criminal
action on the occasion of the fact.