Tuesday,
Iranian President Again Offers Closer Ties To Armenia
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani in Yerevan, October 1, 2019.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reaffirmed his country’s readiness to supply
more natural gas to neighboring Armenia and deepen broader Armenian-Iranian
relations when he visited Yerevan on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian reassured him that Armenia remains committed to
closer ties with Iran despite U.S. sanctions against Tehran.
“Our position is that our relations with Iran must be beyond geopolitical
influences as much as possible because we are neighbors and have many common
interests and we need to cooperate for many more centuries and millennia,”
Pashinian said during his talks with Rouhani.
Rouhani arrived in the Armenian capital the previous night to attend a summit
of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a Russian-led trade bloc comprising five
ex-Soviet republics. He met with Pashinian just hours before the start of the
summit attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We attach great importance to developing and expanding relations with our
friend and neighbor Armenia in all areas,” Rouhani said in his opening remarks
at the meeting with Pashinian cited by the latter’s press office.
“We are ready to continue working with your government to devise and implement
new projects and expand the volume of the gas-for-electricity program,” he
added.
Armenia currently receives up to 500 million cubic meters of Iranian gas each
year and pays for it with electricity supplied to Iran. This swap scheme
mentioned by Rouhani is due to be significantly expanded after the construction
of a third electricity transmission line connecting Armenian and Iranian power
grids.
Work on the high-voltage line, which is mainly carried out in southeastern
Armenia by an Iranian company, was supposed to be completed in September this
year. Citing a senior Armenian official, the Sputnik news agency reported last
week that the end of the construction has been delayed until the end of 2020
due to a host of factors, including the U.S. sanctions.
Iran - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani greets Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian in Tehran, February 27, 2019.
Rouhani already offered to boost Iranian gas supplies to Armenia when he
received Pashinian in Tehran in February. The South Caucasus country’s annual
gas imports total roughly 2 billion cubic meters and mostly come from Russia.
According to the current and former Armenian governments, Russian gas is
cheaper than Iranian gas.
Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian was among Iranian officials accompanying
Rouhani on his latest visit to Armenia. Ardakanian met with Armenian Deputy
Prime Minister Mher Grigorian late on Monday. The two men co-chair an
Armenian-Iranian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation.
Meeting with Pashinian, Rouhani was also reported to hail growing
Armenian-Iranian trade and say that Tehran looks forward cooperating with the
EEU.
Iran and the EEU signed last year a preferential trade agreement which will
come into force later this month. The deal was strongly backed by Armenia, the
only member of the trade bloc that has a land border with the Islamic Republic.
Government To Fund Many More IT Labs In Armenian Schools
Armenia - Schoolchildren in Yerevan participate in the annual Hour of Code
event designed to introduce them to computer programming, 10 December 2017.
In a move aimed at supporting continued rapid growth of Armenia’s information
technology (IT) sector, the Armenian government has decided to help double the
number of engineering labs in public schools across the country.
The Education Ministry announced on Monday that the government has allocated
834 million drams ($1.7 million) in additional funding to the Yerevan-based
Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE) for that purpose. It said the
private association will use the money to open 284 more such labs before the
end of this year.
The UATE began organizing extracurricular robotics and computer programming
courses for schoolchildren in 2008 in an effort to alleviate a shortage of
skilled personnel widely seen as the main challenge facing the Armenian IT
industry. More than 7,500 students currently study at its 284 Armath labs
equipped with computers, robot parts and 3D printers.
IT instructors running most of these labs are paid by the government. The UATE
pays the wages of their colleagues working in the other schools.
Armenia - Schoolchildren take part in a robotics contest in Yerevan, 16 April
2016.
According to the Education Ministry, the UATE will receive almost 1.2 billion
drams in total government funding this year, sharply up from 180 million drams
allocated to it in 2018.
“As a result, nearly half of Armenia’s schools will have Armath engineering
labs by the end of 2019,” read a statement released by the ministry. This will
include virtually all schools located in the country’s northern Shirak, Lori
and Tavush provinces, it said.
IT is the fastest growing sector of Armenia’s economy, having expanded by over
20 percent annually in the past decade. It employs more than 15,000 engineers
and generates over 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
Industry executives and analysts say the sector would have grown even faster
had the quality of education at IT departments of Armenian universities been
adequate. According to the UATE, many of the children taking Armath courses
will be skilled enough to work for tech firms right after finishing school.
Armenia Hosts Eurasian Union Summit
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- Leaders the Eurasian Economic Union's member states meet in Yerevan,
October 1, 2019.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian praised the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) as he
chaired a summit of the Russian-led trade bloc in Yerevan on Tuesday.
Pashinian, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the other EEU
member states -- Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan -- met in closed session
before being joined by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Moldova’s President
Igor Dodon and Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
“Our organization, which is already five years old, is getting stronger year
after year,” Pashinian said in his opening remarks. “It has already proved its
viability and attractiveness as an international integration grouping.”
“I am happy to note that Armenia is making its contribution to this process,”
added the prime minister who criticized Armenian membership in the EEU when he
was opposition to his country’s former government.
Putin likewise declared that the establishment of the EEU has sped up economic
growth and boosted living standards in its member states. “The EEU is
developing steadily,” he said at the summit. “A vast common market has been
created and it is functioning with success.”
Putin went on to announce that Russia and its ex-Soviet allies making up the
bloc will create a “common electricity space” by 2025. He said they are also
planning a common oil and gas market. That requires the “harmonization of
member states’ legislations on gas supplies and transport,” added the Russian
president.
Pashinian touched upon this issue in his speech. He said the prices of Russian
natural gas traded within the EEU should eventually be set in the national
currencies of member states, rather than the U.S. dollar. Moscow is believed to
have objected to this idea until now.
The session ended with the signing of a free-trade agreement between the EEU
and Singapore. Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan signed a
similar deal with Iran last year. Rouhani’s presence at the summit underscored
the deal’s importance to the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian president also used the summit to denounce the “inhuman” U.S.
sanctions against his country. “We believe that the international community
must counter the U.S.’s hostile and unilateral approach and take serious
decisions and effective actions against it,” he said.
Rouhani also complained that some of Iran’s partners, notably Russia, have been
“following the U.S.’s example” and ignoring international law and breaching
bilateral agreements. He did not elaborate.
Press Review
“Zhamanak” describes as unprecedented the Iranian president’s and the Singapore
prime minister’s participation in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) summit in
Yerevan. The paper says the Armenian government should follow up on that by
submitting concrete proposals to Russia and the other EEU member states.
Lragir.am reports that the Kremlin refuted on Monday Armenian media speculation
that Russian President Vladimir Putin will avoid a one-on-one meeting with
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on the sidelines of the EEU summit. “The Kremlin
insisted that a Putin-Pashinian meeting will take place,” writes the
publication. “Also not confirmed are reports that the Russian president will
announce an increase in the price of Russian gas price for Armenia during his
visit.” It claims that “some Armenian circles prefer to side with Moscow” in
actual or potential Russian-Armenian disagreements.
“Haykakan Zhamanak” dismisses opposition criticism of the arrest of two
supporters of Robert Kocharian arrested on charges of harassing the judge
presiding over the former Armenian president’s trial. The pro-government paper
also rejects claims that the weekend arrest of a Justice Ministry official
close to Hrayr Tovmasian, the Constitutional Court chairman, was politically
motivated and constituted government pressure on Tovmasian.
“Hraparak” wonders “how a society that gave the Republican Party 700,000 votes
in 2017 could wake up and wholeheartedly hate it” a year later. “What invisible
hand forced people to sell their votes for 5,000-10,000 drams to a political
force towards which there was so much hidden hatred?” asks the paper. “The
former governments and parliaments acted with their active support. They
tolerated all negative practices in our country. Of course some will counter
that we did not elect [former governments] and vote irregularities and bribes
played a role in the past. But we must not deceive ourselves. A large part of
our society willingly elected, willingly accepted vote bribes and willingly
contributed to the former regime’s reproduction, while the other part tolerated
those who falsified elections, took voter bribes and served the former regime.”
(Lilit Harutiunian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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