Author: Ekmekjian Janet

Democratic Poles
By KAMIL TCHOREK

EURASIA

The Wall Street Journal
August 5, 2005

MINSK — While western Europe focuses on terrorism in London, the
terror state of Belarus, dominated by dictator Alexander Lukashenko,
is treated in the tradition of Neville Chamberlain’s “faraway country
of which we know little.”

This is a mistake. Aside from the close though little-known historical
and cultural ties that the West has with Belarus — Tadeusz Kosciuszko,
a leading figure in the American Revolution and an early advocate
of democracy and emancipation, was born and bred in these parts —
the Moscow-backed regime in Minsk poses a security risk to Europe.

Two years ago Saddam Hussein’s closest aide, Abid Hamid Mahmud
Tikriti, was captured carrying Belarus passports for himself and
Saddam’s notorious sons. After a recent state visit from Tehran,
the flag of Iran has been left to decorate the main thoroughfare in
Minsk. Mr. Lukashenko is arming himself with cutting-edge Sukoyev
Su-30s.

Last week, in a chilling echo of the Balkan conflict, Belarus special
forces stormed buildings used by the nearly 500,000 strong ethnic
Polish community — some of whom live in the village of Kosciuszko’s
birth. The woman who leads the Union of Poles, Andzelika Borys,
yesterday was questioned by police; her deputy and four other
Union activists are in prison. Minsk is trying to replace her with
a quisling. In protest, Warsaw last week withdrew its ambassador
from Minsk.

Poland, Belarus’ western neighbor and the EU’s largest new member,
is taking a far tougher line with Mr. Lukashenko than much of
Europe. Poland has provided refuge for Belarusian émigrés who support
the democracy movement, and has allowed the Belarusian opposition
to use Warsaw as a place to work with Western NGOs and diplomats,
assemble and speak freely without fear of reprisal.

This policy is buoyed by American legislation. Washington’s Belarus
Democracy Act 2004 grants financial backing to promote human rights
and democratic development in Belarus. But as evidenced by a letter
from the Polish foreign ministry to European leaders last month,
at the start of the crisis, Poland is having to work to get the EU
to follow suit.

In private, some EU diplomats emphasize that it is important not to
antagonize Russia, an ally of Belarus, and dismissively claim that
Poland has an interest in raising its profile through conflict.

But Poland’s Eastern policy is set to get tougher still. After
elections next month, Poland’s ruling ex-communists are likely to be
replaced by the conservative opposition. When I recently interviewed
a leading candidate for prime minister, Jan Rokita, he spoke of
foreign policy in positively neoconservative terms. “This now ends
the period of mild politics,” he said of the crackdown on the Polish
minority. “Ours will be a simple message: Lukashenko must go. I will
do all I can to help the Belarus opposition and I will want the EU
to engage rather than look the other way.”

On Monday, Mr. Rokita’s colleague and presidential candidate Donald
Tusk crossed into Belarus to show the Polish community there that they
aren’t alone. Since then, Belarusian Poles who met with Mr. Tusk have
been jailed, and one of the prisoners, Andrzej Pisalnik, who edits
the Polish-language newspaper, has responded by going on hunger strike.

Meanwhile, also on Monday, an emerging opposition leader, Alexander
Milinkevitch was in Poland. “This is not an ethnic minority problem,”
Mr. Milinkevitch told me. “This is a civil rights problem for all
Belarusian people from whatever background. Lukashenko is destroying
civic society and we’ve got to stop him.”

Mr. Milinkevitch believes that there is a European tendency to consign
the current crisis between Warsaw and Minsk to the realm of bilateral
relations. To continue to believe this, he argues, would play into
Mr. Lukashenko’s hands. His immediate wish is for Europe to rally
round Poland in support of democracy in Belarus.

The shared vision of Jan Rokita and Alexander Milinkevitch is rooted in
history. From the sixteenth century, Belarus was united with Lithuania,
Ukraine and Poland in a state known as the “Rzeczpospolita Polska,”
or Polish Commonwealth. Much like in the United Kingdom or the U.S.,
citizens could belong to any or several cultural groups but swear
allegiance to one state.

In such traditions tolerance is born. It is no coincidence that
European Jews, Armenians and Protestants thrived in the Rzeczpospolita
when they were hounded elsewhere. The Rzeczpospolita also produced
Europe’s first written constitution, which was defended militarily by
Kosciuszko, who was born in Belarus of Lithuanian stock, spoke Polish,
and was awarded American citizenship.

It is also unsurprising that the Czarist and Soviet empires attempted
to rub out this history. “Until perestroika I thought I was Russian,
and a minor Russian at that,” commented Mr. Milinkevitch. “All my
life, like everyone in Belarus and Ukraine, I’d been told that Russian
history was our history, and that we didn’t have our own. Now that
we have learnt about ourselves, we want change.”

As a means of coercion, President Lukashenko is doing everything to
russify the nation and make sure the historical links with Poland
aren’t restored. He has changed the national flag from the medieval
red and white Belarusian banner it was in the 1990s to a near copy
of the Soviet era symbol. He has closed Jewish, Polish and Belarusian
schools and established Russian replacements. For years he has touted
plans to reunify with Russia, though they’ve never gone far.

Europe can stand by and watch Belarus, a European country, plunge
into a totalitarian abyss. Or it can recognize and support the immense
effort of so many Belarusians to become a democracy.

Mr. Tchorek is a freelance journalist.

–Boundary_(ID_j6dOBcv426vtxtrt6Z+Xyw)–

When history hurts

Aug 4th 2005 | ANKARA
>From The Economist print edition

Times are tough for outspoken scholars

IF TURKEY is ever to join the European Union, it will need to
acknowledge-and allow free discussion of-the mass slaughter of the
Ottoman empire’s Armenian subjects both during and after the first
world war. That, at least, is the opinion of some EU members-especially
France, where many Armenians live, and where objections to Turkish
entry run high.

In theory, Turkey’s rendezvous with the Union-entry talks are due
to start in October-should be good news for the Turkish scholars
who have risked prosecution by challenging the official line, which
holds that the mass deportation of Armenians in 1915 did not amount
to a conspiracy to kill them. And earlier this year, there were some
good signs.

After decades of denying that the killings-which Armenians round
the world regard as genocide-ever took place, Turkey in April called
on international scholars to determine once and for all what really
happened, saying they were free to examine the Ottoman archives. This
invitation from Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, won strong
praise from EU governments. But the few intrepid souls who took him
at his word have had nothing but trouble ever since.

In May, a group of Turkish historians (many of whom challenge the
official view that the main cause of death among deported Armenians
was exposure and disease) suffered a sharp setback. They had to cancel
a conference which was due to debate the Armenian tragedy after the
justice minister, Cemil Cicek, accused them of “stabbing Turkey in
the back”.

Another bad sign: Hrant Dink, the publisher of Agos, an Armenian
weekly in Istanbul, is facing up to three years in jail for telling
an audience in 2002 that he was “not Turkish” but “an Armenian of
Turkey”. In a separate case, also filed this year, Mr Dink is facing
up to six years for urging Armenians and Turks to stop hating one
another. In both instances, Mr Dink was said to have “insulted the
Turkish state”.

How do these prosecutions square with Mr Erdogan’s stated wish to take
the sting out of Turkish-Armenian relations by allowing some honest
research? “Easily,” insists Mr Dink. “There are forces in this country
who are working night and day to stop Turkey from joining the EU and
part of that is silencing people like me.”

But these days, the problems of liberal Turkish scholars-and advocates
of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation-are not all caused by their own
country. Take the case of Yektan Turkyilmaz, an internationally
acclaimed Turkish scholar who was arrested in Armenia on June
17th on charges of seeking to smuggle antique books out of the
country. Fluent in Armenian, Mr Turkyilmaz is among the few Turks
who say the Ottoman policy in 1915 did amount to deliberate killing.
The first Turkish academic to be granted access to Armenia’s national
archives, Mr Turkyilmaz is being held in a maximum security prison in
Yerevan. He will face trial next month for violating Article 215 of
the Armenian Criminal Code, which equates the smuggling of antiquities
with trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. He could incur a
jail sentence of up to eight years.

Mr Turkyilmaz insists he had no idea about the law, and that the
dealers who sold him some 100 volumes never said he would need
permission to take them out. In an open letter to Armenia’s president,
Robert Kocharian, some 200 academics, campaigning for the historian’s
freedom, said the arrest would “raise serious doubts as to whether
Armenia encourages independent scholarly research on its history.”

Whatever view you take of the Armenian tragedy, it can get you into
trouble-in unexpected places. Dogu Perincek, an eccentric Turkish
leftist, was briefly detained in Switzerland on July 23rd. The Swiss
authorities say he breached article 261 of their penal code, which
makes the denial or justification of genocide a punishable offence.
Mr Perincek had told a conference that to speak of Armenian genocide
was an “imperialist lie”. Oddly enough, the Turkish authorities
seem far more indignant about his minor travails than they are about
Mr Turkyilmaz.

Northern Cyprus gives warm welcome to Azeris

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Aug 4 2005

80 Azerbaijani businessmen and journalists arrived in the
non-recognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) last
Wednesday on a first direct flight from a foreign country to the
Turkish-populated part of the ethnically divided island over the
last 31 years. Citizens of Northern Cyprus welcomed the Azeri
representatives with tears in their eyes,

AzerNEWS correspondent reported from the TRNC capital Lefkosha.
Chairman of the Union of Azerbaijani and Turkish Businessmen Ahmet
Erentok heading the delegation told journalists upon arrival that the
landing of an Azerbaijani airplane at the Ercan Airport of Cyprus is
of great importance.

Economic relations between Azerbaijan and TRNC and investment
opportunities in the country, which faces international isolation, were
discussed during the three-day visit. The two countries’ businessmen
signed two agreements on cooperation in conclusion of a business
forum on Friday, covering trade and banking. The participants also
discussed ways of collaborating in the area of tourism, construction
and agriculture.

‘One nation-three states’ UATB chairman Erentok said that Azerbaijan
and Turkey have been referred to as ‘one nation-two states’ so
far. “But from now on, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Northern Cyprus should
be called ‘one nation-three states’, he said during the businessmen’s
meeting with the national leader, ex-president of Northern Cyprus
Rauf Denktas on Friday.

Denktas called the opening of the Baku-Lefkosha flight as a significant
event for Northern Cyprus, saying that Azerbaijan should be considered
a model for other countries.

“Like the Garabagh region of Azerbaijan, the Northern Cyprus is
still under occupation. The Greek community of Southern Cyprus is
not willing to unite with the Turkish community of Cyprus within a
federation and is trying to keep the entire Cyprus under its control.

But they won’t succeed in this. TRNC exists and will continue to
exist.”

Erentok underlined that UATB will further work to develop relations
between Azerbaijan and Northern Cyprus.

In conclusion of the meeting, Denktas was elected honorary member
of UATB.

Denktas and his son Serdar Denktas, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign
Minister, will visit Baku on August 15.

Serdar Denktas told the AzerNEWS correspondent in Lefkosha that the
goal of the three-day visit is to extend gratitude to President Ilham
Aliyev for the recent opening of a direct flight from Azerbaijan to
the TRNC.

Flights ‘will end blockade’ The opening of flights from Azerbaijan
to the Northern Cyprus is the start of extricating the republic from
blockade, TRNC President Mehmet Ali Talat told ANS TV channel.

Talat said the flights between the two countries mean the ‘end of
a blockade’. He recalled that only Turkish aircraft have landed at
the Ercan Airport located in the northern part of Cyprus so far,
expressing confidence that the flights from Azerbaijan to his country
will provide suitable conditions for other countries to carry out
flights to Northern Cyprus as well.

Deputy Prime Minister Serdar Denktas, in an interview with local
Trend news agency, regarded Azerbaijan’s decision to open flights
as ‘courageous’. “Some countries wanted to take this step before,
but subsequently backed away from it on fears of pressures from the
international community and Greek Cyprus”, he said.

Diplomatic tensions Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos has
condemned the Azerbaijani businessmen’s visit. “Opening flights to
Northern Cyprus is unacceptable”, Turkish NTV channel quoted him
as saying.

Papadopoulos said he has forwarded a letter expressing his objection
to President Ilham Aliyev. “The leadership of Greek Cyprus has decided
to take active steps to prevent such flights. We have filed a complaint
to the International Civil Aviation Organization”, the document says.

Papadopoulos said he is disappointed with the fact that Azerbaijan
became the first country to forge ties with Northern Cyprus and vowed
to do his utmost to prevent other countries from establishing relations
with TRNC.

Azerbaijan has advised not to seek any political motives behind the
establishment of business ties with TRNC. The visit was organized
not by the government but by private companies, said Foreign Ministry
official Tahir Taghizada. “The opening of a flight to Northern Cyprus
should not be politicized or seen as a change in official Baku’s
foreign policy”, he said.

Informal reports say that Greece has threatened to open a flight to
Upper Garabagh in response to Azerbaijan’s decision to start direct
flights from Baku to Lefkosha.

A presidential administration official has said that Azerbaijan’s
plans to forge ties with TRNC should not perturb anyone. The country
will continue working in this direction. “These steps are aimed at
preventing isolation of Cyprus Turks from the international community”,
said head of the President’s Office international relations department
Novruz Mammadov.

President Ilham Aliyev said in a recent meeting with Turkish Minister
for Defense Vecdi Gonul in Baku that Azerbaijan will take ‘important
steps’ to help Northern Cyprus come out of isolation.

The statement follows the President’s earlier promise to support
Northern Cyprus and ensure investments in the republic.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan said during his visit
to Russia that Baku’s recent steps ‘de facto imply recognition of
the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’. “I hope that Azerbaijan’s
policy in this area will continue”, he said.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE

NEWS RELEASE

EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
AMERICAN AVENUE 1
YEREVAN, ARMENIA
TELEPHONE (+374 10) 46 47 00; 46 47 01; 46 47 02
E-MAIL: [email protected]
August 3, 2005

Council of Europe Press Conference and U.S. Embassy Statement on the
Constitutional Reform Process

On August 3, the Council of Europe held a press conference on the
constructional reform process in Armenia. Speaking at the conference
were Council of Europe Special Representative of the Secretary General
in Armenia Bojana Urumova, Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan Vladimir
Pryakhin, British Ambassador Thorda Abbott-Watt, and U.S. Charge
D’Affaires Anthony Godfrey.

U.S. Embassy Statement on the Constitutional Reform Process The United
States welcomes the agreement by the Venice Commission of the Council
of Europe to the amendments to the constitution and looks forward to
their adoption at the November national referendum.

We continue to support the efforts of the Venice Commission and share
the view that the revised draft constitutional amendments represent a
step forward. We applaud the Government’s progress toward democratic
and constitutional reforms.

The process, however, is far from over.

We hope that the Government takes the appropriate steps to open the
discussion to the public and gain the consensus necessary to ultimately
pass a referendum.

When the National Assembly meets in August, we hope legislators
will take seriously the Council of Europe’s recommendations, and
that government and opposition parties will engage in constructive
debate to successfully bring meaningful constitutional reforms to a
referendum in November.

U.S. Charge D’Affaires Anthony Godfrey, U.K. Ambassador Thorda
Abbott-Watt, Council of Europe Special Representative of the Secretary
General in Armenia Bojana Urumova, and Head of the OSCE Office in
Yerevan Vladimir Pryakhin speak at a Council of Europe press conference
on the constitutional reform process.

‘PEOPLE WERE MORE AFRAID OF THE POETRY’: Sally Potter’s
east-meets-west movie features an English pot-washer hurling abuse at
‘Arab bombers’. Did such topicality worry its backers? No – but the
rhyming dialogue got them really scared. Duncan Campbell repo
The Guardian – United Kingdom; Jul 29, 2005

DUNCAN CAMPBELL

When Sally Potter started writing the screenplay for Yes on September
12 2001, she can little have imagined the grim timeliness of its
opening in London. The new film by the director of Orlando deals with
that angry gulf between west and east that lay behind the attacks on
both New York and London. At the film’s heart is a love affair between
an Irish-American scientist (played by Joan Allen) and a refugee
Lebanese surgeon (Simon Abkarian) who can find work only as a cook in
Britain.

At the centre of the affair is the imbalance between the wealthy,
guilty westerner and the angry, disenfranchised Middle Easterner, who
is forced by his refugee status to use his surgical skills to slice
aubergines rather than abdomens. There are below-stairs tensions with
his fellow kitchen staff. In one scene he is berated by an angry
English washer-up: “This country’s full of wankers dressed in sheets/
Asylum fucking seekers in our streets/ And taking all our fucking
jobs. Arab wanks!/ And then what do they do to give us thanks?/ They
fucking blow us up!”

And if backers for the film were nervous about the politics it
presented, they were even more concerned about the form of the script:
it is written entirely in iambic pentameters, from an opening
soliloquy on dirt by the couple’s cleaner (played by Shirley
Henderson, a one-woman Greek chorus with a J-cloth) to the final
scenes in the Caribbean.

“People were much more afraid of the iambic pentameters than the
politics which are relatively oblique, because there is deliberately
no overt message or actual event,” says Potter. It is in verse, she
said, because “it just came out that way” and she instructed her
actors to “ignore the rhyme, ignore the form, just concentrate on the
sense and the emotion”. James Joyce, the last word of whose novel
Ulysses gives the film its title, also played a part. “I wanted to
find some cinematic equivalent to the stream of consciousness.”

Yes was made for around pounds 1m, which included pounds 450,000 from
the UK Film Council, a tiny budget given the location shoots and
high-profile cast, who along with the crew worked for partially
deferred payments – which means they get fully paid only when the film
makes money. This shortage of funds has led to Potter having to play a
large part in a shoestring marketing operation, from writing a blog
about its progress to appearing at countless question-and-answer
sessions with audiences at festivals and openings. Often she has been
accompanied by Allen or Abkarian, a Paris-based Armenian actor from
Beirut whom Potter met and was impressed by five years ago when she
was casting for her previous film, The Man Who Cried. She has already
taken Yes to half a dozen countries, including Turkey, the US and
Mexico, and once it has opened in Britain she will be off with it
under her arm to Japan and Romania.

One of the points Potter says she wanted to make is that Americans are
often seen in monolithic stereotypical terms just as Muslims and
Middle Easterners are. “I wanted to dismantle stereotypes of all
kinds. The British can be quite casual with their anti-Americanism
without realising how divided the country is. I was very struck during
my last trip to see how much opposition there was to the Patriot Act
and to feel the real atmosphere of fear in the air. People said that
they were living in an atmosphere where it was increasingly difficult
to speak out in opposition to the war.”

But what has perhaps made most waves in the US, where the film opened
last month, has been the choice of Cuba as the place which Allen’s
character is told by her aunt to visit: “Castro . . . gave us hope/He
did. Oh, yes; he’s better than the Pope.”

“Going to Cuba was certainly seen as provocative,” said Potter. In
fact, Cuba’s part in the film prompted its own political
lesson. Because President Bush has banned Americans from visiting the
island, Joan Allen was advised by her lawyers that she could face a
heavy fine if she joined the shoot there, so her scenes had to be shot
in the nearby Dominican Republic and cut into the Cuban
footage. Havana also doubles as Beirut as the original plans for
location shooting there had to be abandoned because insurers refused
cover following the outbreak of the war in Iraq. Potter’s position has
not, however, prevented the film from being held by some US critics to
be anti-American.

It arrives in London trailing effusive plaudits from such heavyweights
as John Berger and Michael Ondaatje, but critics in the US have tended
either to love or hate it. Roger Ebert found it “erotic beyond
description . . . it contains politics that are provocative even if
you find them wrong-headed and has ever a movie loved an actress more
than this one loves Joan Allen?”. In the New York Times, A O Scott was
unimpressed and found: “This wants to be a movie about love, hate,
class, religion, ethnicity, science and the fractious state of the
modern world – but rather than expanding our sense of what it all
means, Potter shrinks it down to a single syllable. Tempting as it is
to contradict her yes with a simple no, other responses also come to
mind. And? So? What?”

While the critics may differ, Potter said that she had found the
dozens of audiences with whom she has now watched it to be remarkably
receptive. “I’ve always travelled with the films because I want the
audience to be my teacher so that I can learn for the next one,” said
Potter. “But I have never had the sort of feedback that I’ve had with
Yes. In Turkey, which was the first place where the audience was
predominantly Muslim, the fact that there was a sympathetic Middle
Eastern man in a main part was a news story, because it was such a
rarity. The response there was very much more populist than in America
– we were even in the Turkish Hello!”

Certainly, Turkish celebrity magazines are a strange destination for
one of this country’s most courageous but underestimated film
directors. Potter left school as a 16-year-old determined to become a
film-maker and her earliest work was in the early 1970s with the
London Film-makers Co-op, one of the most experimental and innovative
outfits of the time. But she then changed direction and trained as a
dancer at the London School of Contemporary Dance, later becoming a
co-founder of the Limited Dance Company. A period in performance art,
with the actor Rose English, followed, alongside her work as a
composer with such bands as FIG and the Film Music Orchestra. Those
different skills all came together when she acted, danced and created
the score for The Tango Lesson in 1997, but her first film, Thriller,
a deconstruction of La Boheme, was made more than quarter of a century
ago in 1979. Her first feature, The Gold Diggers, came four years
later.

The first time I met her, more than 20 years ago, she was directing a
night shoot outside the Bank of England in the City which involved
besuited men carrying gold bars on their shoulders in a scene from The
Gold Diggers, another film that fitted no accepted mould and had an
all-woman crew. Her film-making has always been defiantly original and
she has, she said, now become used to being described as
“pretentious”. She had her greatest critical success with Orlando in
1992, starring Tilda Swinton.

“Everything is now doubly relevant,” said Potter of the London
bombings and the film. “Everything has come much closer to home.” In
one scene in Yes, Abkarian angrily tells Allen: “You think you know it
all, that you’re the best/ One life of yours worth more than all the
rest” – lines that this week made Potter think of the media coverage
of the dead in London compared to the simultaneous suicide bombings in
Baghdad which claimed 10 times as many lives in the week following the
July 7 attacks.

Last week, Charles Moore, writing in The Spectator about the London
bombings, reflected that “after last week’s events, there can be few
white couples with children in London who have not at least considered
moving out”. Potter’s film represents the opposite response to that
fearful negativity and it is unlikely there will ever be a more
relevant time to see it.

Yes opens on August 5.

Armenian Defence Ministry reviews troops training in 2005

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
23 Jul 05

The Armenian Defence Ministry held a regular session on 18
July. Defence Minister Serzh Sarkisyan opened the session.

Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces,
Maj-Gen Kamo Kochunts made a report on the results of the 2005
academic year, the combat readiness of the army and the tasks for the
second half of 2005. He noted the positive steps that have been made
in training of the operational and command personnel.

Maj-Gen Kochunts also pointed out at the shortage of military quarters
in the units and the lack of Armenian textbooks for training the
command staff.

Speaking about inspections of the units, the head of the military
training department of the Armenian Defence Ministry, Maj-Gen Murad
Sarkisyan, voiced his concern about the low level of firing exercises
in some units. He also noted that the command staff training programme
requires reforms.

Chief of the General Staff Col-Gen Mikael Arutyunyan pointed out that
the combat readiness of generals and officers is now higher than it
was in 1995 and 1996.

Summarizing the results of the session, Sarkisyan stressed that it was
important to establish strict control over the command staff training
and exercises in the units.

[Video shows the session]

Military Spending Increase Could Finance New Karabakh War

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
July 25, 2005

QUBA, AZERBAIJAN — Former Soviet Azerbaijan can reconquer the contested
Nagorno Karabakh region
at any time because of its expanded military budget, Azerbaijan’s President
Ilham Aliyev said on July 25.

“This year defense spending has grown by 76 percent, we will create a
powerful army and will be able to liberate our lands at any time,” Aliyev
said during a visit to Quba, a city in northern Azerbaijan.

Aliyev acknowledged that negotiations with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh
chaired by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were
important, but complained that they have “not brought results.”

Azerbaijan will spend $300 million (248 million euros) on its armed forces
in 2005, Aliyev said earlier.

The oil-producing nation increased defense spending earlier this year after
a windfall in the national budget due to higher-than-expected oil prices.

Oil revenues are expected to further increase after a massive U.S.-backed
oil pipeline starts pumping later this year.

The four-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline could generate as much
as $160 billion (133 billion euro) in oil revenues to Azerbaijan over the
next 30 years, according to Britain’s BP which heads the consortium running
the pipeline.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war for control over the mainly
ethnic-Armenian Nagorno Karabakh enclave in the early 1990s.

Armenian forces took control of the region and seven others by the war’s
end
in 1994, but its status has yet to be settled and it is still
internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

Some 25,000 people were killed and a further one million displaced as a
result of the Karabakh war.

BANKS – PARTICIPANTS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM TO BE
AMMOUNCED IN LATE AUTUMN

YEREVAN, JULY 22, NOYAN TAPAN. Staring late 2005, the KFW Bank
(Germany) will implement in Armenia a program on renewable energy
development to be financed by the German government. The program
envisages credits for the operating, half completed and new
hydroelectric power stations. According to the Armenian representative
of KFW Karapet Gevorgian, the program advisors will arrive in Armenia
in November to develop jointly with the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA)
the criteria for choosing banks – participants of the program and
organize the competition of banks. K. Gevorgian said that KFW Bank
will allocate a total of 7.5 mln euros for the purpose of providing
long-term credits for small hydro power stations. Out of the indicated
sum, 6 mln euros will be given as a concessional loan (carrying a
0.75% interest rate and repayable over 40 years), and 1.5 mln euros –
as a grant. With the aim of implementing the program, the
German-Armenian Fund-2 will be set up to re-credit the selected
banks-participants with these resources. K. Gevorgian assured that the
repayment terms of the loans provided within the framework of the
program will be longer and their interest rates – lower compared with
those of loans given to other spheres. The hydro power station
together with its infrastructures, as well as other property of the
owner may be put in pledge. However, in order to get a loan, the
recipient’s investment must make up at least 30% of the amount
required for restoration. According to K. Gevorgian, as it is a new
crediting sphere for Armenian banks, initially they will work with the
operating hydro power stations that have guaranteed cash flows.

PRESS RELEASE
Armenian Center for National and International Studies
75 Yerznkian Street
Yerevan 375033, Armenia
Tel: (+374 – 10) 52.87.80 or 27.48.18
Fax: (+374 – 10) 52.48.46
E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
Website:

19 July, 2005

ACNIS Examines Armenia’s Energy Security

Yerevan — The Armenian Center for National and International
Studies (ACNIS) today convened a policy roundtable within the
framework of regional economic development and potential mutual
cooperation. The topic, problems and prospects of Armenia’s energy
safety, perspective is fairly urgent, and the meeting brought together
those in charge of the sector, experts, independent researchers,
and media representatives.

ACNIS research coordinator Stiopa Safarian greeted the capacity
audience with opening remarks. “Within the complex of national
security, the energy component has an undisputable importance
as energy policy touches not only upon important regional and
geopolitical problems but also on the vital interests of the country’s
residents. And no matter how much we rest assured that Armenia is
an electricity-exporting country, its safety still is not adequately
guaranteed because of the many yet unresolved problems in this sector,”
Stiopa Safarian stated.

Presenting Armenia’s conception of energy security and the main avenues
for its policy on the sector’s development, Armenia’s Deputy Energy
Minister Areg Galstian underscored the plans to be implemented by the
year 2025, as well as those which down the road aim to safeguard the
country’s capacity and energy safety. “At the heart of the strategic
plan for the sector’s progressive enhancement there are qualitative
indices: guarantee of energy independence; technologies which economize
energy; usage of domestic resources and alternative energy sources;
and others which have been cultivated by taking global experience into
account,” Galstian said, detailing the activities to be undertaken
in the next five years. The deputy minister also mentioned that the
Iran-Armenia gas line would be put to use within the same time span,
and projects would be brought to life which envisage the following:
raising the safety level of Armenia’s nuclear power plant; gas
supply to the entire; restoration of country; the heat-supply system;
operation of the hydro-electric plant at Meghri and the first reactor
of Yerevan’s thermo-electric plant; modernization of underground gas
storage; and the construction of small hydro-electric plants.

A policy intervention by Levon Yeghiazarian, director general of the
Scientific Research Institute of Energy, encompassed strategic issues
concerning Armenia’s energy security. Yeghiazarian deemed especially
important the necessity to advance concepts that include a database
for normative-technical documents, a development plan for the system,
price formation and tariff policy within the electricity market,
the fuel supply complex, investment programs, and the energy system’s
dependability and seismic safety. However, according to Yeghiazarian,
aside from global problems, all consumers are primarily interested
in the quality of service. “Since the field for legal relationships
between consumer and supplier is largely undeveloped, no one faces
responsibility when our household appliances break down as a result
of high voltage,” Yeghiazarian underlined.

In his address on “The Energy Legislation and European Union
Approaches,” Areg Barseghian, an expert in energy and transport
infrastructures from the Armenian-European Policy and Legal Advice
Center (AEPLAC), pointed out that according to some parameters,
when it comes down to energy safety, Armenia’s legal field does not
meet the requirements of European Union laws. European legislative
acts which regulate markets in the spheres of oil and oil products,
electricity, gas, and nuclear energy are non-existent in Armenia.
“European legislation contains norms that are not defined by Armenia’s
law on energy, because these norms do not refer to the realities in
Armenia,” the expert continued. The incompatibility of the legislation
regulating the energy sector also bears an adverse effect on attempts
to satisfy consumer demand.

Is there any other alternative to the current conception of Armenia’s
energy security? Searching for an answer to this question, economic
policy analyst Gegham Kiurumian reached the conclusion that the
major guarantee for Armenia ‘s safety is hydro-energy development,
to which much attention is not being paid. “It is time to reject an
existence on an account of imported fuel and to put our hopes on our
own resources alone,” the analyst stressed, expressing concern at
the same time regarding insufficient usage of small hydro-electric
plants, solar energy, and other important domestic sources. According
to the figures presented by Kiurumian, Armenia lags behind most when
it comes to the annual amount of electricity supply per capita.

The formal interventions were followed by contributions by Levon
Vardanian from the Ministry of Energy; Edward Aghajanov, an economist
with the Armat Center; Haik Gevorgian, Haikakan Zhamanak daily’s
columnist on economic matters; Robert Kharazian, a member of the Public
Utilities Regulatory Board; independent expert Hrant Baghdasarian;
and many others.

Founded in 1994 by Armenia’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs Raffi K.
Hovannisian and supported by a global network of contributors, ACNIS
serves as a link between innovative scholarship and the public policy
challenges facing Armenia and the Armenian people in the post-Soviet
world. It also aspires to be a catalyst for creative, strategic
thinking and a wider understanding of the new global environment. In
2005, the Center focuses primarily on civic education, conflict
resolution, and applied research on critical domestic and foreign
policy issues for the state and the nation.

For further information on the Center call (37410) 52-87-80
or 27-48-18; fax (37410) 52-48-46; or e-mail [email protected] or
[email protected]; or visit

ARMENIAN PRESIDENT AWARDS PRIZES TO WINNERS OF “BEST SPORT-AMATEUR FAMILY” COMPETITION

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
July 18 2005

YEREVAN, July 18. /ARKA/. RA President has awarded prizes to the
winners of the republican competition “Best sport-amateur family”
for the RA President’s prize. The winners of the competition,
Hovsepyan family (Armavir region), Sahakyan family (Yerevan), and
Mikaelyan family (Shirak region), received AMD 500,000, AMD 400,000
and AMD 300,000 from the President. Kocharyan pointed out that the
number of the competition participants is rising, and the fund of
the competition is increased. The President expressed wish that
the number of participants increase in conformity with the amount of
funds allocated for the competition and reach several hundred thousand
people. “There is no losers in this competition, as it is only families
for which sport is the way of life that win,” Kocharyan said.

In his turn, Chairman of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sport,
RA Government, Ishkhan Zakharyan pointed out that 83 families from
11 Armenian regions took part in this year’s competition against
54 last year. He said that only 33 families entered the finals and
continued struggling for the title of best sport-amateur family in
six competitions: ball throwing, standing broad jump, rope-pulling,
cross=country race, relay-race, and weight-lifting exercises. “Twelve
million drams were allocated for the competition this year due to the
President’s support, whereas only about 1.5mln AMD were allocated last
year,” Zakharyan said. According to him, such competitions contribute
to sport development in Armenia.

The President presented all the competition participants aged under
12 with tracksuits. The smallest participants in the competition,
6-year-old Aramais Sargsyan and Mariam Beglaryan, who broke the record
in weight-lifting exercises, received AMD 100,000 bonuses instituted
by the RA Olympic Committee.

The competition was organized by the State Committee for Physical
Culture, RA Government, with the sponsorship of the RA President.P.T.

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