Wednesday, August 9, 2017 Further Growth Recorded In Armenian Diamond Industry Armenia -- Workers at a diamond-processing plant near Nor Hajn. Armenia's diamond-processing industry, once a key sector of the national economy, has continued to grow rapidly this year after a decade of decline that began in the early 2000s, official statistics show. According to the National Statistical Service (NSS), Armenian firms manufactured 90,776 carats of gem diamonds in the first half of 2017, up by 53.5 percent from the same period in 2016. Refined diamonds were Armenia's most important export item throughout the 1990s, providing jobs for thousands of people. The sector had a rough time in the following years due to a host of mainly external factors, including a loss of reliable suppliers of rough diamonds. The onset in late 2008 of a global financial crisis only aggravated the slump, with Armenian diamond output plummeting by half in 2009 to less than 50,000 carats. The volatile sector's ensuing slow recovery accelerated in 2013. The industry contracted sharply in 2014 but returned to double-digit growth the following year. Its combined output surged by 54 percent in 2016, to 125,431 carats. The figure was still well below the 2003 level of almost 290,000 carats recorded by the NSS. The country's diamond-cutting companies employed more than 2,000 people at the time. The largest of those companies belong to Western investors that supply them with mostly African rough diamonds. The Armenian government has long been trying to facilitate imports of more uncut diamonds from Russia, which has one of the world's largest deposits of the precious stone. The Armenian Ministry for Economic Development reported on Tuesday that one of its senior officials, Gagik Mkrtchian, and Armenia's ambassador to Russia, Vartan Toghanian, met with a Russian deputy finance minister in Moscow this week to discuss ways of boosting Russian diamond supplies. "An agreement was reached on taking practical steps as early as possible," it said in a statement. The statement cited Mkrtchian as saying that the agreement's implementation will contribute to continued growth in the Armenian diamond-processing sector. It did not elaborate. Armenian, Azeri FMs To Meet Again In September . Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian at a news conference in Yerevan, 30May2017. Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian confirmed on Wednesday that he will hold fresh talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov in New York next month. He said the meeting will take place "in the second half of September" and focus on "creating necessary conditions for advancing negotiation process." Nalbandian and Mammadyarov most recently met in Brussels on July 11 in the presence of the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. The mediators continued to press for a meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents. In a joint statement, they said the two ministers agreed to meet again in September for further discussions on the issue. According to Nalbandian there is still no final agreement on the proposed Armenian-Azerbaijani summit. "There is nothing concrete on the meeting [of the presidents] yet," the minister told reporters. In a televised interview aired on July 16, President Serzh Sarkisian said a "preliminary agreement" on his face-to-face talks with Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev was reached during the co-chairs' tour of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone in June. "My expectations from the meeting are not big, but that meeting could take place this autumn," he told the Armenia TV station. The two presidents most recently met in May and June 2016 shortly after four-day deadly hostilities around Karabakh. They agreed to allow the OSCE to deploy more field observers in the conflict zone and investigate truce violations occurring there. The Azerbaijani government has since been reluctant to implement these safeguards, however, saying that they would cement the status quo in the absence of progress in peace talks. The Armenian leadership insists, meanwhile, on an unconditional implementation of the confidence-building measures that were agreed by Aliyev and Sarkisian. Nalbandian implied on Wednesday that he does not expect the U.S., Russian and French mediators to come up with new peace proposals. Over the past decade, the mediators have advanced a framework peace accord calling for a resolution of the dispute that would start with a gradual liberation of virtually all seven districts around Karabakh that were fully or partly occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces in 1992-1993. In return, Karabakh's predominantly ethnic Armenian population would determine the territory's internationally recognized status in a future referendum. China Building New Embassy Complex In Armenia . Sargis Harutyunyan Armenia - Senior Armenian and Chinese officials break ground on the site of a new Chinese embassy bulilding in Yerevan, 9Aug2017. China officially launched the construction of a new and much bigger building for its embassy in Armenia on Wednesday in what a senior Chinese diplomat described as another sign of deepening relations between the two nations. Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, Yerevan's Mayor Taron Markarian and China's visiting Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai broke ground on the site of the 40,000-square-meter embassy compound that should be completed by the end of 2019. Officials said that it will be the second largest Chinese diplomatic mission in the former Soviet Union. "This is a great and joyful event," the Chinese ambassador in Yerevan, Tian Erlong, told reporters at the ground-breaking ceremony. "The Chinese Embassy in Armenia will have a new building in Armenia." "China will be better represented in this country. This is logical because the scale and nature of our cooperation are rapidly developing, and this obviously requires more efforts, more human resources and, therefore, a larger building," he said. China - President Xi Jinping and his visiting Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian adopt a joint declaration after talks in Beijing, 25Mar2015. Meeting with Nalbandian earlier in the day, Li reportedly said Beijing would like to "further deepen the dynamically deepening partnership with Armenia." "The unprecedentedly high-level relationship and friendship between China and Armenia are based on sincerity and mutual respect," the Armenian Foreign Ministry quoted him as saying. According to a ministry statement, Nalbandian told Li that close relations with China are one of Yerevan's foreign policy priorities. The statement added that the two men discussed efforts to boost bilateral commerce and the situation in the region. Nalbandian was reported to praise China's "balanced position" on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian agreed to deepen ties between their nations when then they met in Beijing in 2015. In a joint statement, they noted "mutual understanding on issues relating to pivotal interests and concerns of the two countries." Armenia - Lieutenant General Movses Hakobian (R), the chief of the Armenian army's General Staff, meets with Chinese Rear Admiral Guan Youfei in Yerevan, 13Apr2017. According to Armenian government data, Chinese-Armenian trade rose by 35 percent to $243 million in the first half of this year, making China Armenia's third largest trading partner after Russia and the European Union. China also seems interested in stepping up military cooperation with Armenia. A top Chinese military official, Rear Admiral Guan Youfei, visited Yerevan in April, holding talks with Defense Minister Vigen Sargsian and the chief of the Armenian army's General Staff, General Movses Hakobian. The Armenian Defense Ministry said they reached "agreements on expanding cooperation and implementing a number of mutually beneficial projects in the area of defense." Yerevan Mayor Open To Street Renaming . Hovannes Movsisian Armenia -- The Yerevan municipality building. Yerevan's Mayor Taron Markarian said on Wednesday that he is ready to consider an opposition demand to rename streets and public schools in the Armenian capital still bearing the names of controversial Soviet-era figures. The opposition Yelk alliance announced earlier this week plans to submit a corresponding bill to the city council in which it has the second largest faction. The faction leader, Arayik Harutiunian, said it will target Yerevan streets and schools named after ethnic Armenian Communist leaders who were involved in Joseph Stalin's mass repressions in Soviet Armenia and other parts of the Soviet Union. Harutiunian singled out Anastas Mikoyan, Stalin's Armenian-born associate who for decades held top leadership positions in Moscow. "Having a street named after Mikoyan means recognizing that person's negative contribution to our history," he said. "As you know, thousands of Armenians were executed or exiled on orders signed by him." Markarian told reporters that his office has received no formal proposals from Yelk yet. "We will look into the proposals and definitely express our view after that," he said without commenting further. The Armenian government sparked vehement protests from human rights groups and civil society representatives when it attempted to erect Mikoyan's statue in downtown Yerevan in 2014. The outcry forced it to give up the initiative. Armenia was one of the first Soviet republics to remove the statue of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union's founder, from the central square of its capital in 1991. Most Yerevan streets with Bolshevik-related names were renamed in the following years. Vahagn Khachatrian, who served as Yerevan mayor from 1992-1996, said his administration did not have sufficient time to change other controversial street names as well. Khachatrian emphasized the fact that those decisions were recommended by a special commission that thoroughly examined relevant particular Bolshevik leaders' role in Soviet Armenian history. Khachatrian, who is now affiliated with another opposition party, believes that the current municipal administration should tread just as carefully on the Yelk proposal. "There is no need to rush," he told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). Press Review Interviewed by "Aravot," a Georgian political analyst, Gela Vasadze, stresses the significance of the latest U.S.-led military exercises taking place in Georgia. He says that the "Noble Partner" drills are not only involving more troops, including from Armenia, but also happening amid growing tensions between Russia and the West. Vasadze claims that the West lost patience with Moscow after the latter interfered in the last U.S. presidential election. "As regards Armenia's participation in the NATO exercises in this situation, I don't know what explanations Armenia's authorities will give to their Russian partners regarding that," continues the analyst. "But whatever that explanation, it's clear that it will be a mere formality. Clearly, they realize in Yerevan today that too many eggs are placed in one basket." Lragir.am says that continued deliveries of Russian weapons to Azerbaijan have caused discontent in Yerevan, including from Armenian government circles. The pro-Western publication speculates that Yerevan decided to join the drills in Georgia in response to that. It says that Armenian leaders are no longer buying into Russian claims that Azerbaijan could have bought offensive weapons from other countries had Moscow refused to sign massive arms deals with Baku. Richard Giragosian, a Yerevan-based analyst, tells Tert.am that Armenia can serve as a "bridge" between Russia and the United States while remaining a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). "The danger of being the cause of a confrontation between the U.S. and Russia is not that great," he says. (Tigran Avetisian) Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2017 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org