Author: Hunanian Jack

AGBU Press Office
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PRESS RELEASE

Friday, November 13, 2009

AGBU President Berge Setrakian Participates in Third Diocesan
Representative Assembly at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

>From October 31 to November 3, 2009, the third Diocesan Representative
Assembly of the Armenian Apostolic Church was held in the Mother See of
Holy Etchmiadzin, presided over by His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme
Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians and with the participation of
representatives from the Armenian Patriarchates of Jerusalem and
Constantinople; Diocesan Primates from Armenia and the Diaspora;
high-ranking clergy; Members of the Supreme Spiritual Council and
representatives of the laity. President of the Armenian General
Benevolent Union (AGBU) Mr. Berge Setrakian also arrived in Armenia to
participate in the meeting.

On October 31, the opening ceremony of the meeting was held under the
presidency of His Holiness Karekin II. In attendance for the opening
session were Mr. Bako Sahakian, President of the Republic of Nagorno
Karabakh; Mr. Tigran Sargsian, Prime Minister of the Republic of
Armenia; and AGBU President Setrakian. In his remarks, His Holiness
reflected on the current process of development of general guidelines
for the Armenian Church.

Welcoming speeches were made by NKR President Sahakian and Prime
Minister Sargsian. The Prime Minister reflected on the relations and
close cooperation between the Church and State, stressing the
significant role of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the preservation of
national identity.

On November 2, the Diocesan Representative Assembly convened in the
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and continued its work under the
presidency of His Holiness Karekin II. Present for the morning session
was the President of the Republic of Armenia, Mr. Serge Sargsian.

President Sargsian addressed the clergy and participants of the
assembly, wishing them success in their meetings. He welcomed all the
steps being taken for the reinforcement of the mission of the Armenian
Church and for the fulfillment of the spiritual needs of Armenians
living in the Diaspora. He also reflected on the 10th anniversary of
consecration of His Holiness, expressing his gratitude for the enormous
work that was accomplished during the last decade. Wishing His Holiness
long-lasting Pontifical years and new achievements, President Sargsian
granted to His Holiness the Order of St. Mesrop Mashtots — the highest
order of the Republic of Armenia — for his efforts in the preservation
and development of national and spiritual values and virtues. Also
present at the meeting was AGBU President Setrakian.

In his speech on November 3, the third day of the session, Mr. Setrakian
reflected on the role of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the history of
the Armenian people and the cooperation between the Mother See of Holy
Etchmiadzin and the AGBU in the national-political life of our nation.

"The Armenian Apostolic Church, as a national church, has had an
undeniable role in the history of our people. Today, in light of the new
challenges facing the Diaspora, our national and spiritual life is in
need of revival and, in this sense, we all need to act with new
approaches and modern solutions."

Speaking about the relations and cooperation between the Mother See of
Holy Etchmiadzin and AGBU, Mr. Setrakian said, "Traditionally our
relations have been strong and enduring. Our cooperation has been based
on the fact that the joint activities of the Mother See and AGBU have
always been favorable for the nation in the Diaspora. In the course of
history, guided by pan-Armenian interests, we’ve walked hand in hand
with the Mother See with love unbiased and impartial. We are united in
our endeavors and goals and certainly we are more powerful together."

Mr. Setrakian praised the activities of His Holiness Karekin II in the
past decade. "In the past ten years, we have witnessed important
achievements in reviving spirituality and spreading the faith. You’ve
not only been a builder, a catholicos who built new churches in our
motherland, but also a true spiritual leader, who consecrated 240 young
clergymen for national-spiritual service. Due to Your active
organizational skills, You are loved, respected and highly valued by
everyone. I wish You good health and well-being, and I wish unwavering
strength to the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin," said Mr. Setrakian.

Established in 1906, AGBU () is the world’s largest
non-profit Armenian organization. Headquartered in New York City, AGBU
preserves and promotes the Armenian identity and heritage through
educational, cultural and humanitarian program, annually touching the
lives of some 400,000 Armenians around the world.

PUBLISHING OF PRO-OPPOSITION ARMENIAN DAILY BANNED DUE TO SUIT BY PRINTING HOUSE

Haykakan Zhamanak
Nov 10 2009
Armenia

The Armenian authorities, namely, the court marshal service, have
banned dissemination of the pro-opposition Chorrord Ishkhanutyun
(The Forth Power) paper starting on 9 November, the pro-opposition
Haykakan Zhamanak daily said on 10 November.

Previously a court of law in Armenia’s capital Yerevan banned the
publication of the daily by its then publishing company, Koghmnaki
Andzants M, and any other companies on 5 November. Even earlier,
the court had banned the publication of the paper by Ogostos company,
which is the founder of Chorrord Ishkhanutyun, Haykakan Zhamanak said
in a separate report on 6 November. Gind printing house, which was
printing the paper, had sued Ogostos company, demanding that the court
should both arrest the property of the company and stop publication
of the Chorrord Ishkhanutyun paper due to the company’s debts.

The Aravot daily reported earlier that Gind, bypassing the agreement
signed between Ogostos company and the printing house, unilaterally
and secretly from the paper decided to raise the tariff for printing
Chorrord Ishkhanutyun paper. The Chorrord Ishkhanutyun paper is
now printed under the name "Chorrord Inknishkhanutyun ("The Fourth
Autocracy") and can be bought from newsstands starting from today,
Haykakan Zhamanak said in its 10 November report. The next court
hearing will be held on 11 November, according to an earlier report
by Haykakan Zhamanak.

MINISTER: "AZERBAIJANI AND ARMENIAN PRESIDENTS WILL MEET IN EUROPE LATE NOVEMBER"

APA
Nov 11 2009
Azerbaijan

Baku. Lachin Sultanova – APA. OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs proposed to
Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia to
meet in one of the European cities, said Minister of Foreign Affairs
of Azerbaijan Elmar Mammadyarov, APA reports.

The minister said mediators were discussing the date and venue of the
meeting. "Following the presidents’ meeting the foreign ministers will
meet in Athens on December 1-2 within the OSCE ministerial meeting".

After the last meeting to the region, the co-chairs said in their
statement that the presidents agreed to meet and the meeting would
take place late November.

CHANGE IN STATE DUTY RATES MAY HELP RAISE COMPETITIVENESS OF ARMENIAN TOURISM

Noyan Tapan
Nov 9, 2009

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 9, NOYAN TAPAN. As a result of a change in the rates
of the state duty, in addition to the entry visa for 120 days with the
state duty of 15 thousand drams (.4), an entry visa for 21 days with
the state duty of 3,000 drams has been established in Armenia. As Head
of the Tourism and Territorial Development Department of the Ministry
of Economy Mekhak Apresian said at the November 9 press conference,
this change may significantly help raise the sector’s competitiveness.

"It will also have a positive effect on the formation of a tourism
package’s competitive price," he underlined.

As regards the price policy, M. Apresian said it should be revised.

"The private sector forms the prices, while as a result of revision
of the price policy, a considerale part of domestic tourists would
prefer to spend their holidays in Armenia," M. Apresian noted, adding
that the state should create the respective conditions and indirectly
affect the price policy.

However, according to him, the problem is not in high prices, but
in the fact that the population is not informed about services at
moderate prices. He said this gap is conditioned by the problem
related to the hotel services – tour operator cooperation.

ROBERT SIMMONS: NATO SUPPORTS THE ARMENIA-TURKEY NORMALIZATION
Anna Nazaryan

"Radiolur"
06.11.2009 14:25

"The normalization of the Armenian Turkish relations ad opening of
the border will be a good sign of stability for the region, which has
frozen conflicts," NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative
in the South Caucasus and Central Asia Robert Simmons told a press
conference in Yerevan today.

According to him, the opening of the border will be of great economic
importance, as well. "There is already substantial trade between
Armenia and Turkey despite closed border and it can only improve the
economy of the region," he said.

"Though the alliance supports these relations, NATO can not participate
in this process or support any of the sides. We hope, the protocols
will be ratified, because these are of great stabilizing importance,"
he said.

As to the relations between Armenia, and NATO, Robert Simmons said:
"We continue working closely with the Armenian Ministry of Defense
to develop interaction between Armenian armed forces and the NATO
forces and to assist the Government of Armenia in defense reform
processes, especially developing the education and training systems
of the Defense Ministry."

STUDIES IN THE AREA OF STATISTICAL MECHANICS REPORTED FROM A.E. ALLAHVERDYAN AND CO-RESEARCHERS

Science Letter
November 3, 2009

Allahverdyan and co-researchers

"A basic task of information processing is information transfer
(flow). Here we study a pair of Brownian particles each coupled to
a thermal bath at temperatures T-1 and T-2," scientists in Yerevan,
Armenia report (see also Statistical Mechanics).

"The information flow in such a system is defined via the time-shifted
mutual information. The information flow nullifies at equilibrium,
and its efficiency is defined as the ratio of the flow to the
total entropy production in the system. For a stationary state
the information flows from higher to lower temperatures, and its
efficiency is bounded from above by (max[T-1, T-2])/(vertical bar
T-1-T-2 vertical bar). This upper bound is imposed by the second law
and it quantifies the thermodynamic cost for information flow in the
present class of systems. It can be reached in the adiabatic situation,
where the particles have widely different characteristic times. The
efficiency of heat. low-defined as the heat flow over the total amount
of dissipated heat-is limited from above by the same factor. There
is a complementarity between heat and information flow: the set-up
which is most efficient for the former is the least efficient for
the latter and vice versa. The above bound for the efficiency can be
(transiently) overcome in certain non-stationary situations, but the
efficiency is still limited from above. We study yet another measure of
information processing (transfer entropy) proposed in the literature,"
wrote A.E. Allahverdyan and colleagues.

The researchers concluded: "Though this measure does not require any
thermodynamic cost, the information flow and transfer entropy are
shown to be intimately related for stationary states."

Allahverdyan and colleagues published their study in the Journal
of Statistical Mechanics – Theory and Experiment (Thermodynamic
efficiency of information and heat flow. Journal of Statistical
Mechanics – Theory and Experiment, 2009;():9011).

For additional information, contact A.E. Allahverdyan, Yerevan Physics
Institute, Alikhanian Bros St. 2, Yerevan 375036, Armenia.

The publisher’s contact information for the Journal of Statistical
Mechanics – Theory and Experiment is: IOP Publishing Ltd., Dirac House,
Temple Back, Bristol BS1 6BE, England.

ARMENIAN ANALYST: NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE OF ARMENIAN-TURKISH DIPLOMACY

ArmInfo
2009-11-05 15:54:00

ArmInfo. Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an important issue of
Armenian-Turkish diplomacy, Director of Armenian Center for National
and International Studies Richard Giragosian said at a seminar in
Yerevan, Wednesday.

According to him, Turkey’s constant demands on the Karabakh issue
is a challenge not only to Armenia, but to the whole international
community. He pointed out that the progress in Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict is not on the agenda today. He said he personally did not
expect any changes in the Karabakh peace process. Now it is more
important how to define this process in which Turkey and OSCE are
expecting some signs of progress, Giragosian said. He added that
Armenia has strong expectations from Turkey to take further steps
to restore the relations, and Brussels and Washington are exerting
constant pressure on Turkey for the latter to implement its commitments
within a reasonable period of time.

PRESS-SERVICE OF NKR FOREIGN MINISTRY DIRECTS AN OPEN LETTER TO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF ‘BERLINER ZEITUNG’

ArmInfo
2009-11-05 15:43:00

ArmInfo. Press-service of the NKR Foreign Ministry has directed an
open letter to the editor-in-chief of because of an article of one
of its correspondents.

As ArmInfo correspondent reported from Stepanakert, the letter says:
‘Having personally visited the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, Berliner
Zeitung newspaper’s correspondent, if even desired, couldn’t but notice
that the people who had experienced terrible hardships, destructions,
and grief in an unequal struggle had, however, managed to realize its
right to self-determination, heroically stand all the calamities of the
war, restore its state infrastructure, and implement radical reforms
for establishing a state corresponding to the European standards.

After the World War II, the Germans dreamed for an integrated state
and lived with this idea tens of years. We don’t think that the German
nation’s aspiration can be questioned by any other nation.

Exactly 20 years ago, the Berlin separating wall was destroyed in just
a few days by the will of the great powers, and the Germans not only
reunited, but also gained full- fledged independence, on the occasion
of which we congratulate this distinctive and gifted nation of the
Old World.

Nagorno Karabakh gained its independence, having, first of all,
neutralized the Azerbaijani aggression, defending the lives of
children, women, and old people. Just that’s why nobody can question
the will and right of Nagorno Karabakh’s people to independence. In
other words, nobody brought the independence and right to free life to
Nagorno Karabakh on a tray. And if today’s population of our Republic
makes only 140 thousand, then it is also a vivid demonstration of
Azerbaijan’s evident anti- Armenian policy; otherwise, over a million
and a half of Karabakhi Armenians and their descendants would not be
citizens of other states today. So, like Germans in the recent past,
today we are also striving for our sovereignty.

The Germans have, for many years, cherished as relics the stones
and fragments of the once separating Berlin Wall. The situation is
totally different in Nagorno Karabakh. Here, the shrines are the
marble tombstones of soldiers perished at the Karabakh War for the
independence of their homeland. The correspondent of your newspaper
could not but notice that.

Unfortunately, we should state that having overcome thousand
kilometers, journalist Tobias Asmuth presented a superficial and
distorted article to the readers of the newspaper, without inquiring
the causes and essence of the Karabakh issue. Similarly, the author
could easily write a number of analogous articles, staying at home
and using various sites.

However, if freedom of speech and press is equivalent to a sin against
truth for the Berliner Zeitung, then it is quite a different matter.’

ARMEN POGHOSYAN: YEREVAN RESIDENTS’ LIABILITIES FOR WATER AMOUNT TO 3 BILLION AMD

PanARMENIAN.Net
05.11.2009 17:21 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "Yerevan residents’ liabilities for water amount to 3
billion AMD, but it is so-called old debts incurred by residents before
the water meter had been introduced. We decided to ask the government
to pay back this debt, the government has already covered some part
of this debt, " president of the Armenian Association of Consumers
(AAC) Armen Poghosyan told a meeting with reporters on November 5.

Armen Pogosyan stressed that over the past few years in Yerevan, no
cases of mass poisoning from water were observed, but such cases were
recorded in the regions. "This is due to deterioration of pipes,"
the chairman of AAC says. "Network of water pipes of the country
became a sieve, which can cause poisoning.

Armen Poghosyan said that 83 per cent of Yerevan residents receive
water round the clock, but in some areas of the country residents
receive water once every three days.

GPM GOLD INTENDS TO INCREASE MINING VOLUMES IN ARMENIA 2.7-3.7 TIMES

ArmInfo
2009-11-03 16:22:00

ArmInfo. The gold recovery company GPM Gold, which is included in
the GeoProMining Group, intends to increase the ore mining volumes
in Armenia 2.7-3.7 times to 1.5-2 mln t per year, the press-release
of the GeoProMining Office in Armenia says.

The press-release says that GPM Gold is conducting negotiations
with the concessionaire of Armenian Railway – "North Caucaus
Railway" on raising of ore transportation volumes from Sotk
Mine to Ararat in 2010. Preliminary plans include expanding of
Sotk-Vardenis-Hrazdan-Ararat branch line capacity for transportation
of 1,5-2 million ton ore annually.

During the first month after re-commissioning of Ararat plant
(November 2008) the Company mined 21 473 ton ore, in December –
30 410, in January of 2009 mining volumes increased up to 31 285,
and in February – up to 38 000 ton. Presently the company is mining
and processing 45 000 ton ore monthly. In the result, the Company
is producing 30-40 000 ounces of gold annually. With a view to raise
processing and recovery volumes GPM Gold is developing a new investment
program, which suggests re-equipment of Ararat plant. In the result
of such re-equipment, plant productivity will raise up to 80-100 000
ounces of gold annually (1 ounce = 31,1034768 grams).

Russian Company GeoProMining obtained 100% shares of Sterlite Gold
Ltd. from International Vedanta Resources in September of 2007.

Sterlite Gold was the sole owner of AGRC. Investments for acquisition
of the package of Vedanta Resources, repayment of debts, redemption
of stocks from minority shareholders, as well as maintenance of the
project and staff during a year and a half and also re-equipment
of plant have formed more than 160 million USD. GeoProMining Group
is an international private company of diversified metal resources,
founded in 2001. Company’s production is gold in the form of "Dore",
as well as copper, molybdenum and antimony concentrates. The group of
companies are engaged in metal mining in Russia, Armenia and Georgia.

Company’s main assets in Armenia are: Sotk gold mine, Ararat processing
plant and Agarak Copper-Molybdenum Combine.