Author: Emil Lazarian

Cork City await UEFA Fair Play draw

Online.ie
Sports

online.ie
2004-06-08 09:30:05+01

Cork City take on Shelbourne in the eircom League tonight but they
are up against Matt Holland’s Charlton also in the draw for the Fair
Play League.

The draw for the Fair Play League takes place in Germany tonight,
with 11 European teams vying for two places in the UEFA Cup.

The teams are based on their disciplinary record last season.

The 10 other teams who will go into the ballot along with Charlton are:
Esbjerg (Denmark), SK Brann (Norway), Freiburg (Germany), Cork City
(Republic of Ireland), FC Lahti (Finland), Real Mallorca (Spain),
KS Teuta (Albania), FC Mika (Armenia), Throttur Reykjavik (Iceland),
plus a team from Ukraine yet to be decided as their league season
runs until June 19.

As Pat Dolan hopes his team make the UEFA Cup, Ireland’s Matt Holland
is hoping to lead Charlton on a European adventure through draw.

The Republic of Ireland midfielder would welcome the prospect of
European football coming to The Valley for the first time.

“It would be great for the fans here,” he said on the club’s official
website,

“We would have liked to have done it through the league, but if it
does come about through the Fair Play draw, we’ll take it – especially
after the season we had.

“We benefited from playing in the UEFA Cup when I was at Ipswich and
it was a great experience playing against the top sides like Inter
at the San Siro.”

The Addicks finished third in the discipline-based rankings for
England, behind winners Arsenal and Chelsea.

However, with both of those clubs having already secured a place
in the Champions League, Charlton were put forward as the Football
Association’s representatives.

Last season Manchester City came through the Fair Play League system
to get a crack at European football.

And should Charlton be successful, it would not leave much time for
changes to pre-season plans as qualification would mean a two-legged
UEFA Cup qualifying tie on July 15 and 29, meaning the club’s planned
trip to China would most probably be shelved.

The draw will take place during the half-time interval at the UEFA
European Under-21 Championship final between Italy and Serbia and
Montenegro in Bochum this evening, kick-off 7.45pm.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenia (and friends) versus the World

Chessbase News, Germany
June 9 2004

08.06.2004 What do Lputian, Akopian, and Vaganian have in common?
Easy one. Why put Kasparov, Leko, and Gelfand on the Armenian team with
them? We’ll tell all. They will face a World all-star team of Anand,
Svidler, Adams, Bacrot, Vallejo, and van Wely in a spectacular team
event starting June 10 in Moscow.

Team Petrosian takes on the World

The Petrosian Memorial – June 10-16 – Ararat Park Hyatt Hotel,
Moscow, Russia

In this year of the 75th anniversary of the 9th world champion’s birth
there has already been one Petrosian Memorial tournament and later in
the year there will be another. But the one that everyone is likely to
remember best starts Thursday in Moscow. With two days to go before
the first round we haven’t seen any official website for the event,
but we’ll be bringing you reports and games.

It’s a Scheveningen-format team tournament that matches the best of
Armenia against a team of international stars. Each of the six team
members will play everyone on the other team for a total of 36 games.
Best of all, it’s classical chess. (Although Tigran Petrosian was
legendary in casual blitz, we’re sure he would approve.)

The Petrosian team is manned by the cream of Armenia’s powerful
chess crop. 1999 World Championship runner-up Vladimir Akopian, feared
Bundesliga warrior Rafael Vaganian, and experienced international Smbat
Lputian. It’s worth noting that tiny Armenia has the second-highest
number of players participating in the 2004 FIDE world championship
in Libya this month, seven. (Russia has 19.)

The rest of the team is made up of players with connections to Armenia
or Petrosian himself. Garry Kasparov’s mother is Armenian and he has
always been claimed by that chess-mad nation. Peter Leko married
an Armenian, one named Petrosian no less! (No immediate relation,
sadly.) His wife Sofia is the daughter of Armenian GM Arshak Petrosian,
who is also his trainer and will be the coach of the Petrosian team
in Moscow.

Then comes Israeli Boris Gelfand, who is not about to change his
name to Gelfandian to fit in. The lanky GM was the top student of
Petrosian’s school back in the early 80’s before Petrosian’s untimely
demise in 1984 at the age of 55.

The World team is a powerful line-up with one player each from India,
Russia, England, Netherlands, France, and Spain. In the 2002 Russia
versus the World rapid tournament Akopian and Gelfand were on the
World team. But Armenia comes first! Vishy Anand was also first board
for the World team in that event. When will India be ready to take
on the World so he can play for the home team?

The tournament was to have ended exactly on Petrosian’s birthday on
June 17, but had to be compacted due to the FIDE world championship
getting underway in Tripoli the next day. So there won’t be any rest
days in Moscow. The three Armenians plus Adams, Vallejo, and Bacrot
will immediately head to Libya after the final round.

Kasparov’s team may look outrated but actually the teams are
perfectly equal! Both have an average rating of 2705. No doubt the
Armenians would benefit from playing in Yerevan instead of Moscow,
but the appropriately named Ararat Hotel might serve as compensation!
Mount Ararat, the resting place of Noah’s Ark in legend, is actually
in Turkey, but most Armenians look to it as an ancestral symbol.

In normal pairings it’s #1 vs #6 on day one with the clash of the top
boards left for the final day. That would mean first round pairings
of Kasparov-van Wely, Leko-Vallejo, Gelfand-Bacrot, Akopian-Adams,
Vaganian-Svidler, Lputian-Anand, colors to be determined.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Ex-Soviet Immigrants Praise Reagan
By GILLIAN FLACCUS

The Associated Press
06/09/04 05:47 EDT

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Rabbi Velvel Tsikman remembers a time when the only
link he had to his Jewish heritage was a line in his Soviet passport
that read “Nationality: Jewish.”

Now, he watches over a vibrant Russian Jewish community in West
Hollywood from his office at the Chabad Russian Jewish Community
Center.

Tsikman says he credits his spiritual freedom to the late Ronald
Reagan, whose anti-missile program drew the Soviets into a costly
arms race, helping lead to the collapse of what Reagan called the
“evil empire.”

Reagan’s 1987 demand to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the
Berlin Wall – “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” – was the ultimate
challenge of the Cold War.

Tsikman recalled with emotion the first time a Jewish synagogue opened
in the Ukraine after years of religious oppression. He began to wear
a yarmulke openly and grow his beard. He soon veered from a career
in computers to the spiritual life of a rabbi.

“It was like going from the basement to the street and seeing the
light,” Tsikman said. “(Reagan’s) doctrine, what he did, was very
helpful to destroy the monster that was there in Europe.”

Those sentiments were echoed across southern California, home to
large Russian and Eastern European immigrant communities. They also
were reflected in poignant signs and flags placed outside the Santa
Monica mortuary where Reagan’s body was taken after his death Saturday
at age 93.

Lithuanian and Polish flags sprouted from the grass. Posters paying
homage to Reagan sat propped against a fountain alongside flowers
and balloons.

“Sir – You told Gorbachev to ‘Take down this wall.’ We helped.
Thanks for your courage and leadership,” read one sign that was
affixed with two quarter-sized bits of the Berlin Wall.

Another said: “Solidarnosc! With love from Poland,” a reference to
Reagan’s efforts to promote the Solidarity labor movement in Poland
in the 1980s.

In West Hollywood, Tsikman has watched over the Russian Jewish
community center for 12 years, an anchor for up to 50,000 Soviet bloc
immigrants in greater Los Angeles. The neighborhood is dotted with
Russian, Ukranian and Armenian groceries, pharmacies and video stores,
and people speak more Russian than English.

At the community center, Tsikman brushed his finger against his
yarmulke and watched contentedly as dozens of elderly people ate at
long tables, laughing and chatting in Russian.

“They are living in a paradise here. It’s like God is paying them for
a terrible life in Russia,” Tsikman said. “These people were sitting
home waiting to die. When they came here, they came alive again.”

Down the street, Armenian grocer Paul Khostikyan paused from unloading
fresh fruit to remember the man he called “the best president in U.S.
history.”

Khostikyan, 54, who immigrated in 1990, said he remembered being
moved by Reagan’s bold words.

“I liked how he talked about freedom,” said Khostikyan, now a U.S.
citizen. “He really meant it, not like other presidents. He will be
in history much more than Clinton or Bush.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Opposition MP Suggests To Discuss Karabakh In Parliament

Baku Today
June 9 2004

Baku Today 09/06/2004 12:50

Camil Hasanli, a member of parliament from opposition Azerbaijan
Popular Front Party (reformers branch), suggested Tuesday to include
the Nagorno-Karabakh issue to the agenda of the parliament, complaining
that the legislative body has not discussed the issue for long.

“About three and half years have passed since the [Azerbaijani]
parliament discussed the issue,” Hasanli said, complaining that no
parliament in the world (other than Azerbaijan’s) has shown such
indifference to occupation of its territories. “The Nagorno-Karabakh
issue must be included to the agenda of the parliament and serious
discussions must be held on the issue,” the opposition MP said.

In response, Murtuz Aleskerov, the speaker of the parliament, said
there is no need to debate the Karabakh issue as long as any progress
is achieved in peace negotiations.

“What are we going to decide by discussing the issue here? Our
president has repeatedly said that Azerbaijan’s occupied territories
must be liberated, we’ll secure Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
If this is the case, what are we going to achieve by discussing the
issue in the parliament?” asked Aleskerov.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN CITIZENS CAN BE SENTENCED TO 1-YEAR IMPRISONMENT FOR INSULTING
PUBLIC AGENT

09.06.2004 15:17

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenian deputies voted for the insertion
into the Criminal Code of Armenia a number of articles calling
for administrative punishment for insulting of a public agent. As
minister of Justice David Harutyunian, who has submitted the project,
stated, a penalty will be fixed for a person outraging a public
agent while for the second offense the citizen can be sentenced to
1-year imprisonment. Besides, the item, according to which the cases
of people sentenced to life imprisonment can be reconsidered only
after 20 years of imprisonment, has been excluded from the RA Criminal
Code. The given amendment, in the minister’s words, is connected with
the resolution by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe,
which says that despite the kind and term of punishment, the prisoners
should be given a chance to submit the application for retrial.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Armenian officers expect to get visas on 16 June for Baku-hosted NATO
conference

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
7 Jun 04

Armenian servicemen will be able to take part in a planning conference
for the Cooperative Best Effort-2004 exercises.

The chief of the Armenian Defence Ministry’s foreign relations
and international military cooperation department, Maj-Gen Mikael
Melkonyan, told “Aylur” news programme today that the Armenian
servicemen will receive entry visas to Azerbaijan on 16 June. Gen
Melkonyan noted that Azerbaijan confirmed this to NATO’s command.

To recap, to take part in the planning conference the Armenian
servicemen had to receive the entry visas no later than 7 June.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A1+ TV COMPANY SUIT AGAINST ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT TO BE HEARD IN EUROPEAN
HUMAN RIGHTS COURT SOON

A1 Plus | 17:17:15 | 08-06-2004 | Social |

“The process has already started.Let’s see what will be”, Mesrop
Movsesyan, the head of A1+ TV Company that had been stripped of its
broadcasting license two years ago, said Tuesday speaking at a news
conference in the House of Journalists.

Mesrop Movsesyan and Tigran Ter-Yesayan, the Chair of the Lawyers
International Union, said at the news conference that European Human
Rights Court has already decided to start hearing A1+ suit filed in
2002 October against Armenian government.

“We are in advantageous position”, said Ter-Yesayan, who is also A1+
TV company’s attorney in the European Human Rights Court. The Court
has already notified the Armenian government about the necessity to
explain why the company’s suit is not due to be heard, he said.

It is hard to say whether Armenian government will manage to prove
that A1+’ s rights have not been infringed or not.

Ter-Yesayan said the plaintiff has spent one year to prepare a
1000-page complaint while the defendant is given time up to September
28, 2004, to submit objections to the Court and justify them.

If the government won’t respond to the Court letter till the deadline,
in any case the legal proceedings will continue.

Tigran Ter-Yesayan said it wasn’t ruled out that the Court to offer
both sides to settle the matter amicably by reaching compromise. In the
event if the accord is reached, no details of that will be revealed.

What A1+ expects in case of winning the case?

There is no demand of giving broadcasting frequency to the company in
the suit. We expect moral and financial compensation, Ter-Yesayan said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Kerkorian Strikes Again

Casino City Times, MA
June 7 2004

Most popular gaming on the internet? Visit the new
online.casinocity.com! by Richard N. Velotta

By Our Partners at the Las Vegas Sun

LAS VEGAS — MGM MIRAGE’s surprise bid to buy out Mandalay Resort
Group had the familiar signature of a legendary deal maker.

Who else but Kirk Kerkorian, majority owner of MGM MIRAGE shares,
could engineer such a stunning proposal to acquire one of the hottest
casino companies on the Strip?

It was only four years ago that Kerkorian, who has waged boardroom war
involving companies such as Chrysler Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
stunned the gaming world with an audacious acquisition bid for Steve
Wynn’s Mirage Resorts Inc.

Observers were as stunned over the weekend as they were in 2000 when
Kerkorian engaged Wynn — a casino executive with a vastly different
style.

In the end, Kerkorian bought Mirage, although Wynn’s negotiating
resulted in the price for Mirage going up from $17 to $21 a share in
the $6.4 billion deal.

And, in a fairy-tale “all’s well that ends well” finish, Wynn wound
up taking his cut of the deal to buy the Desert Inn and turn the
site into what promises to be the next big must-see Strip resort,
Wynn Las Vegas, which will open next year.

Kerkorian and his company didn’t fare so badly either — they took
control of one of the prime Strip resorts Wynn built, Bellagio, and
the property credited with generating Las Vegas’ boom days, The Mirage,
as well as Treasure Island, the Golden Nugget (which recently changed
hands again), half of the Monte Carlo and one of Biloxi, Miss.’s best
properties, Beau Rivage.

“The game being played is one Kerkorian has played many times,” Bill
Thompson, chairman of the Department of Public Administration at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said at the time of the 2000 deal
for Mirage Resorts.

Thompson, contacted Sunday about the Mandalay Resort Group deal,
said he could almost say the same thing now.

“It’s clear that he’s found that the best opportunity for casino
gambling in the world is in Las Vegas,” Thompson said. “In one sense,
he’s voting on the Las Vegas Strip with this deal.”

But the fact that Kerkorian is making a play for Mandalay Resort Group
indicates to Thompson that maybe the 87-year-old financier doesn’t
see as much opportunity in international deals as some experts have
suggested.

“Maybe England is not opening up like he expected,” Thompson said in
reference to Great Britain’s deliberations on tax policies accompanying
the expansion and deregulation of gambling in that country.

MGM MIRAGE’s decision in May not to bid any higher than $555 million
to acquire Wembley Plc, a British operator of dog tracks in the United
Kingdom and Rhode Island, lends credence to that theory. MGM MIRAGE
bowed out of the bidding.

“He’s a great deal maker, but maybe there were a few things that didn’t
look right,” he said. “Maybe stuff was not working out as he expected
and he has some capital and he said, ‘What can I do with my money?’ ”

Whatever the answer is, it’s not likely to come from Kerkorian
himself. He shuns public attention, preferring to leave management
of his business operations to trusted executives such as MGM MIRAGE
Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Lanni.

Kerkorian has earned a reputation as a shrewd investor with some of
his most notorious deals occurring outside the gaming realm.

In 1965, Kerkorian, a former World War II pilot, sold Trans
International Airlines for a profit of more than $100 million after
building the airline from a couple of war surplus planes.

He used the profits to acquire the Flamingo in 1967 and to build
the International, now the Las Vegas Hilton, in 1969. At the time,
it was the largest hotel in the world.

Kerkorian sold both of those properties to Hilton Hotels Corp., in
1970, using the proceeds to buy the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio.
The name became the cornerstone for his MGM Grand hotel-casino, which
opened at the Strip and Flamingo Road in 1973. That hotel also was
the largest in the world when it opened.

He held the hotel and studio for several years, even enduring one of
Las Vegas’ worst disasters, a 1980 fire that killed 83 people. In
1985, Kerkorian sold the property to Bally Entertainment Corp.,
which turned the hotel into Bally’s hotel-casino.

Kerkorian picked up the Desert Inn in 1987 and the Sands in 1988. He
quickly sold the Sands to Sheldon Adelson, who eventually transformed
the site into the Venetian hotel-casino, and he sold the Desert Inn
to ITT-Sheraton in 1993.

Meanwhile, Kerkorian stripped away many of the MGM Studio’s assets
and sold them to Ted Turner in 1986, buying it back a few months
later after Turner had secured its film library. In 1990, Kerkorian
sold the studio again, this time to Giancarlo Parretti, an Italian
financier. Kerkorian acquired the studio for a third time in 1996
after accusations of financial misdealings threatened to close it.

Kerkorian’s various dealings in the early ’90s enabled him to build
the largest hotel in the world for the third time — the MGM Grand
at the Strip and Tropicana Avenue on the old Marina hotel-casino site.

Both Kerkorian and Wynn considered buying the parcel across the
street from the new MGM Grand and it was Kerkorian that emerged as
the owner. He and partner Gary Primm built the New York-New York
hotel-casino there, with Primm eventually selling his share of both
that property and his three resorts on the Nevada-California state
line to MGM Grand Inc.

Kerkorian has shown the same deal-making tenacity in his investments
in Chrysler Corp. Last month, he testified in a court case in U.S.
District Court in Delaware in which he has sued DaimlerChrysler AG,
claiming that company engineered a takeover of Chrysler but called
it a merger in order to avoid paying the acquisition fee.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Asia Times
June 9, 2004

Middle East

SPEAKING FREELY
Northern Iraq – calm like a bomb
By W Joseph Stroupe

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested
in contributing.

As negotiations at the United Nations on a new resolution for Iraq
apparently near a close, developments with respect to the Kurds and
north Iraq, where there has been relative calm until now, are looking
more and more ominous. Recently, the People’s Congress of Kurdistan
(the former Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK), announced an abrupt
end to its five-year ceasefire with Turkish forces, warning that it
would soon resort to violent means to achieve its ends.

Within a few days of the announcement, Kurdish forces in
southern Turkey did attack Turkish forces, prompting a violent
response. Additionally, according to a recent Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty report, “Kamis Djabrailov, chairman of the International
Union of Kurdish Public Organizations that represents the Kurdish
minorities in Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and other CIS [Commonwealth
of Independent States], told Interfax on 31 May that his organization
approves the announcement three days earlier by the People’s Congress
of Kurdistan that it will end on 1 June its five-year ceasefire in
hostilities with the Turkish armed forces.”

Hence, the regional political, diplomatic and even military
mobilization of Kurdish forces, in an attempt to secure its own
interests as the June 30 date for the handover of sovereignty to
Iraq nears, appears to be under way. In verification of that fact,
on June 7, Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal
Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan threatened to pull out of
the interim government unless the new United Nations Security Council
resolution guarantees Kurdish autonomy and a veto over the direction of
the interim government as promised in the draft interim constitution,
which was very reluctantly signed by the Shi’ite representatives,
but which is something the Shi’ite majority refuses to accept under
any circumstances.

The Kurdish representatives also expressed their bitter disappointment
over the fact that no Kurd was chosen to fill the positions of
either prime minister or president. Hence, in the Kurdish view,
their interests are being severely slighted as the June 30 date
nears. Whether a political and diplomatic compromise can be reached
that satisfies all the parties is not at all assured. The Sunnis and
Shi’ites appear to be mostly content with the look of the new interim
council and with Iraq’s direction, but the Kurds are certainly not
content. They have been marginalized before, by the United States
itself, and intend to take care of their own interests, by violence
if need be. This is indeed ominous.

The pointed Kurdish demands threaten to disrupt the relative
contentment with the transition process, which now exists among the
Sunni and Shi’ite populations, among Iraq’s neighbors and within
the international community at large. In actuality, there is little
sympathy for the cause of the Kurds in Iraq and the surrounding region.

That is especially so in Turkey, Syria and Iran, where Kurdish
groups are viewed as nothing more than destabilizing terrorists,
threatening the national security of the three nations, which have
recently deepened their cooperation in the effort to subdue such
groups. And in Armenia and Azerbaijan, the last thing that is wanted
is for such Kurdish groups to push the region toward violence and
instability in the pursuit of Kurdish autonomy.

An independent Kurdistan is, therefore, anathema to all but the Kurds
themselves. It is the United States which has greatly exacerbated the
current situation by raising Kurdish hopes for an independent Kurdistan
in northern Iraq. Months ago, in the atmosphere of violent insurgency
in Iraq and the approaching handover of sovereignty, the US-drafted
interim constitution significantly raised such Kurdish hopes, giving
them a veto over the direction of any Iraqi interim government,
as well as over the final Iraqi government to be seated in 2005.

Fearful of the influence of Shi’ite religious fundamentalism as the
transition to sovereignty progressed, the administration of President
George W Bush evidently saw the Kurds as an entity it could use to
keep such Shi’ite influence in check, to limit its power in any new
Iraqi regime, so as to prevent the formation of an Iranian-style
theocracy in Iraq. However, as matters are turning out, the most
powerful positions being filled in the interim government are occupied
by mostly secular Sunnis and Shi’ites.

So, the United States now has little use for the Kurds, who see clearly
that once again they are being abandoned by the US. All the parties see
the Kurds, therefore, as possible spoilers of the solution currently
being put together under UN auspices. Hence, little sympathy exists
for them. Realizing this fact, the Kurds are already resorting to
threats and violence in an effort to get a satisfactory hearing. By
its short-sighted, ad hoc approach to Iraq’s complicated situation,
first using the Kurds and then casting them aside, the United States
may have sealed both its own and Iraq’s fate.

There appears little hope that the Kurdish demands can be sufficiently
taken into consideration without at the same time losing the already
cautious and tentative support of the Sunnis and Shi’ites. And
there also appears little hope that the Kurds will suddenly satisfy
themselves with what the other two factions are comfortable in giving
them. Hence, whether the Kurds might temporarily tone down their
demands for the time being, or whether they more likely will ratchet
up their demands as the UN negotiations proceed and the June 30 date
nears, one thing that appears certain is that they will hold a major
key to how events proceed in Iraq.

The United States has let loose a Kurdish “monster”, not only on
Iraq itself, but also on the region at large, a “monster” which
cannot easily be put back into the box. If a diplomatic solution
cannot be crafted that satisfies all of Iraq’s three factions, and
it is doubtful that one can, then a great deal of military muscle
will be needed in the entire region to keep the disenfranchised Kurds
“in check”. And that muscle will have to come increasingly into play
in northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In the end, the handover of sovereignty on June 30 may not change
anything, except that it may well accelerate Iraq’s descent into
sectarian violence, with Turkey and Syria cooperating militarily
to secure their interests in northern Iraq by taking control of
that region, and the southern regions of Iraq moving significantly
closer into cooperation with Iran, with the US military caught in
the middle. The relative calmness of northern Iraq is very likely
to be much like the calmness of a large bomb – its calmness very
deceptively masks the huge explosion which is likely imminent.

Yerevan Adamant In Delaying Metsamor Closure
By Atom Markarian 09/06/2004 01:46

Radio Free Europe, Czech Rep
June 8 2004

The Armenian government remains determined not to close the Metsamor
nuclear power plant in the near future and reaffirmed this position
during talks with senior officials from the European Union last week,
Industry Minister Karen Chshmaritian said on Tuesday.

Chshmaritian headed a delegation of government officials who
represented Yerevan at a regular meeting of an Armenia-EU “cooperation
committee” which took place in Brussels on Friday. The issue of
Metsamor’s future was high on its agenda. “The European side wants
Armenia to set a date [for Metsamor’s closure],” Chshmaritian told a
news conference. “However, Armenia can not set a date without having
financing resources [to replace the facility] and clarifying the
entire procedure for the closure.”

The EU has long been arguing that the plant is located in a seismically
active area and that its Soviet-built nuclear reactor does not meet
modern safety standards. The bloc’s executive European Commission has
offered to grant Armenia 100 million euros ($123 million) in return
for the decommissioning of the plant which generates about 40 percent
of the country’s electricity.

Chshmaritian reiterated Yerevan’s rejection of the offer, saying that
as much as $1 billion is needed for safely shutting down Metsamor
safely and putting in place an alternative source of inexpensive
energy. “The Energy Ministry presented its calculations [to the EU],
according to which the total cost of the work would be worth that
much,” he said. He added the Armenia-EU body decided to set up a
working group that will look into the issue in detail and present
its findings by the end of this year.

The government wants to keep Metsamor operational for at least another
decade despite its past promise to the EU to decommission the plant
in 2004. The European Commission now seems to be stepping up pressure
on Yerevan to do that as soon as possible in line with its policy of
phasing out all Soviet-designed reactors remaining in Eastern Europe.

Still, an EU spokeswoman in Brussels told RFE/RL last week that the
bloc will continue to finance further measures to improve Metsamor’s
operational safety “up to its closure.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress