Author: Tumanian Talar

Armenia, Ukraine FMs meet on the sidelines of the CIS Ministerial

armradio.am
27.03.2010 13:57

On March 26 the Foreign Minister of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian,
participated in the recurrent sitting of the CIS Foreign Ministers in
Moscow.

The agenda of the sitting included more than twenty issues related to
CIS activity – the implementation of the CIS development doctrine,
promotion of cooperation in the humanitarian field, cooperation in the
spheres of security and migration policy, intensification of
cooperation between law-enforcement bodies, etc.

Edward Nalbandian had a meeting with the newly appointed Foreign
Minister of Ukraine Konstantin Grishenko.

Congratulating Grishenko on assuming office, Minister Nalbandian said
he expected close cooperation to raise the level of bilateral
relations to a qualitatively new level.

The Foreign Ministers exchanged views on the intensification of the
political dialogue and cooperation within international organizations.

Edward Nalbandian and Konstantin Grishenko touched upon a number of
regional and global issues and the ways of their resolution.

Armenia First in Region to Open EU Information Centres

16:27 – 26.03.10

In the framework of an Armenia-EU political cooperation program, an
inter-administrative working group has been created which has
developed an EU information strategy, as a result of which 10 EU
information centres are set to be created in Armenia: one in Yerevan,
and the other 9 in the marzes (provinces).

On March 26, National Security Council Secretary of Armenia Artur
Baghdasaryan, who is also the head of an inter-administrative
committee that coordinates Armenia-EU cooperation, and ambassadors of
EU member states dicussed the draft program of those information
centres.

Baghdasaryan, highlighting the importance of EU support in opening
those centres, said that Armenia is taking a serious step by opening
the above-mentioned centres, as Armenia will be the first country in
the region to have such centres.

Tert.am

Is Ankara trying to regain the Diaspora?

26.03.2010 18:53 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolutions in the
Swedish Parliament and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on
Foreign Affairs, perhaps forced the Turkish leadership to soften its
policy in regard to the Armenian Diaspora.

According to CNN – Turk, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
expressed willingness to establish contacts with representatives of
Armenian Diaspora.

"We want to normalize relations not only with Armenia, but also to
establish contacts with Armenian Diaspora", Turkish foreign minister
said, stressing that approach to the Armenian Diaspora as a
"monolithic mass’ is wrong.

Regarding the Armenian Genocide issue, Ahmet Davutoglu stressed the
issue cannot be approached from a unilateral perspective. "We must
create such an atmosphere in which we can fully understand what
happened to the Armenians, but they also need to show respect to our
memories," the Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs said.
The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic
destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during
and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and
deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to
lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths
reaching 1.5 million.

The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be
April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250
Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.
Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes
and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food
and water, to the desert of what is now Syria.

To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially
recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide
scholars and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has
been also recognized by influential media including The New York
Times, BBC, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.

Aysor, Armenia
March 26 2010

Edward Nalbandian participates in CSTO ministerial meeting

Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian participated Thursday in
the CSTO ministerial meeting.

Ministers of the CSTO states gathered on March 25 in Moscow for an
informal meeting to discuss issues related to organisation’s
activities and joint programs, situation in Afghanistan and necessity
of the stability-making efforts.

Edward Nalbandian spoke to the meeting; he stressed the growing weight
of the organisation on the world stage, referring to the recently
signed agreements between Secretaries-General Ban Ki-moon of the
United Nations and Nikolai Bordyuzha of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization.

`Armenia considers Russian side’s initiative to be an important and
topical,’ said Armenia’s Foreign Minister, referring to the design of
the agreement on the European security. `The agreement should contain
the principle of indivisibility of security and international law as
well as it should include an exclusion of subordination of one
principle to another.’

FMs of the SCTO-states adopted a range of statements in relation to
the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II, joint efforts on
designing the Treaty on European Security, support of Kazakhstan’s
initiatives, and the upcoming conference on proliferation of nuclear
weapons.

ARMENIA: KEY BENEFICIARY OF RUSSIAN-GEORGIAN BORDER OPENING
Emil Danielyan

Georgian Daily, Georgia
March 25 2010

Russia and Georgia have reopened their main land border crossing
less than 18 months after fighting their brief, but bitter war and
severing diplomatic relations. Armenia appears to have been the main
driving force behind the development, and will likely become the key
beneficiary of renewed commerce through the Kazbegi/Upper Lars narrow
pass in the Caucasus Mountains.

Upper Lars is the only Russian-Georgian border crossing located
beyond Georgia’s Russian-backed breakaway regions of South Ossetia
and Abkhazia. It served as Armenia’s sole overland commercial
conduit to Russia and Europe until being controversially closed
by Moscow in June 2006 at the height of a Russian-Georgian spy
scandal. Armenian exporters of agricultural produce and other
perishables were particularly reliant upon it, accounting for much
of the cargo traffic through Upper Lars in the summer and fall each
year. Its closure, ostensibly due to an upgrading of Russian border
control facilities, forced them to re-route their supplies through the
more expensive and time-consuming rail-ferry services between Georgia,
Russia, and Ukraine.

Hence, the Armenian government’s strong interest in seeing the
border crossing re-opened as soon as possible. It has for several
years pressed the Russians to complete the checkpoint repairs on
their side of the frontier and repeatedly secured corresponding
reassurances from them. Some pro-government Armenian lawmakers exposed
Yerevan’s frustration with the apparent Russian blockade of Georgia
in late 2006, when they publicly accused Moscow of disregarding the
interests of Russia’s main regional ally in its escalating standoff
with Tbilisi. The August 2008 war in South Ossetia served to dash
Armenian hopes that the border would re-open anytime soon.

Yet, despite remaining technically at war, Moscow and Tbilisi
subsequently engaged in behind-the-scenes diplomacy on Upper Lars.

Armenia is known to have arranged and mediated at least one round of
the Russian-Georgian proxy negotiations reportedly held in Yerevan in
October 2009. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced two months
later that he saw no "particular obstacles" to re-opening Upper Lars
and resuming direct flight services between Russia and Georgia,
despite the Kremlin’s continued refusal to do business with the
Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili (Regnum, December 9). Later
in December, the Russian and Georgian governments announced that they
had agreed to resume passenger and cargo traffic through the mountain
pass from March 1, 2010 (RIA Novosti, December 24, 2009).

Both sides honored that agreement, drawing praise from not only
Armenia, but the United States and the European Union. The US
Ambassador to Georgia, John Bass, hailed the development as "a positive
step that will further the improvement of international relations
and the economic status of the region’s population." For his part,
Spanish Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country
currently holds the rotating EU presidency, inspected the border
crossing during his March 3 visit to Georgia (, March 5).

"I can confirm that [Russian-Georgian] negotiations indeed took
place in Armenia and with Armenia’s mediation," Armenian Foreign
Minister, Edward Nalbandian, told journalists on March 2. He called the
resulting agreement "a big success" for all three countries involved
(, March 2).

The deal could not have come at a better time for Armenia, whose
economy has long been hamstrung by closed borders with Turkey and
Azerbaijan, and still reeling from the 2009 global financial crisis.

Local entrepreneurs say that the positive impact of re-opening the
Upper Lars on the domestic economy and its agricultural sector,
in particular, will be felt as soon as this summer.

Arsen Ghazarian, the Chairman of the Armenian Union of Industrialists
and Entrepreneurs, forecast that transportation costs incurred by
exporters will fall by at least 25 percent. According to Ghazarian,
who also owns a cargo shipment company, a single truck laden with
Armenian agricultural products takes at least 23 days to reach Russia
through a Black Sea rail-ferry link. Going through Upper Lars will
reduce shipping time by almost half, he said (Kapital, March 2).

With Russian-Georgian trade having been reduced by Moscow to a
trickle in recent years, the border re-opening is of lesser economic
significance to Georgia, at least in the short term. The Saakashvili
administration’s willingness to restore commercial links with Georgia’s
arch-enemy resulted, among other things, from its warm rapport with
Armenia’s current leadership. Even after the Russian-Georgian war,
the two South Caucasus neighbors managed to reconcile their differing
geopolitical orientations and focus instead on common interests.

Saakashvili said that the Georgian-Armenian relationship is as
"cloudless" as ever, as he greeted his Armenian counterpart, Serzh
Sargsyan, in the Georgian port of Batumi on February 27. Their
two-day informal talks reportedly centered on economic issues,
with both presidents pledging to foster Georgian-Armenian economic
"integration." "We are dependent upon each other and we should use
this circumstance for good," the Georgian leader told journalists
(Armenian Public Television, February 28).

The venue of the talks was also symbolic. Batumi and Georgia’s other
major Black Sea port, Poti, process at least two-thirds of freight
shipped to and from Armenia. Use of Georgian territory by Armenian
trading companies should expand not only as a result of the Upper
Lars re-opening, but also the ongoing reconstruction of roads in
southern Georgia leading to the Black Sea coast. The Manila-based
Asian Development Bank (ADB) agreed last September to support the
project with a $500 million loan. An additional $500 million loan
approved by the ADB at the time will finance the planned expansion of
Armenian highways stretching from the border with Iran to southern
Georgia. The funding, requested by the Armenian government, is a
further indication that the landlocked country will regard Georgia
and, to a lesser extent, Iran, as its most reliable supply line even
in the unlikely event of the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border.

Source:

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THE HOPEFUL CANDIDATES
By Zain Shauk

Burbank Leader
politics/blr-candidates032410.txt
March 24 2010
CA

Business owner, TV host, educator and attorney vie for seat.

Candidates in the April 13 special primary election to fill a
vacancy in the 43rd Assembly District will head to Burbank City
Hall at 7 tonight for a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters
of Glendale/Burbank.

The following are brief descriptions of each of the four candidates,
three of whom have never served in public office.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of votes, the election will
proceed to a runoff contest June 8 between the top vote-getters from
each party.

The winning candidate will serve in the Assembly seat until the end
of the current legislative session Nov. 30.

Another election Nov. 2 will determine who will fill the seat for
the following two-year term.

Sunder Ramani is a small-business owner and former president of the
Burbank Chamber of Commerce.

He has been actively involved in various community organizations in
the last 25 years, including YMCAs, educational foundations, Kiwanis
clubs and the Salvation Army in Glendale and Burbank.

He is a Republican, but has cast himself as an "independent thinker"
who has supported Democratic candidates in the past.

Ramani has pushed for deregulation for businesses, schools and other
services, and for reining in the size of government bureaucracies.

He has opposed new taxes and has spoken out against the array of new
laws proposed each year, many of which he says have made operations
complicated for business owners.

Chahe Keuroghelian is an Armenian-language television host and formerly
served as spokesman for the Glendale Police Department.

He started his career as a reporter at a newspaper in Lebanon and
eventually became a journalism and political science instructor at
Mesrobian Armenian High School in Montebello, where he taught for
four years.

He was convicted in 2001 of brandishing a firearm and served 90 days
on house arrest for what he later described as a mistake that broke
his family apart.

He is a Democrat.

Keuroghelian has advocated for eliminating the two-thirds requirement
for passing a budget plan and has called for "creative solutions"
for creating more state revenues, including seeking foreign investment
from oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.

He has also pushed for more classroom funding by reducing spending
on educational administration.

Nayiri Nahabedian is a member of the Glendale Unified School District
Board of Education and of the field faculty in the College of Health
and Human Services at Cal State Los Angeles.

The Democrat was previously a social worker for Los Angeles County and,
in 2008, taught a seminar on racial sensitivity at the Burbank Police
Department, where she offered a critical assessment to officials in
advance of several officers filing civil rights lawsuits.

Nahabedian has advocated for removing the Legislature’s two-thirds
majority vote requirement for passing a budget plan and has called for
taxes on oil companies that drill in California in order to provide
another revenue source.

She has committed to fighting for more state resources for public
education.

Democrat Mike Gatto is an attorney and former district director for
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).

He teaches weekly language classes for English learners at Huntington
Career College.

Gatto has argued that the state’s deficit problems are a result of
the limited amount of budget safeguards in place and has advocated
for creating a "rainy day fund" that could be used in years when tax
revenues fall.

He is also pushing for other state revenue sources and has supported
Democratic efforts to tax oil companies who drill in California.

Gatto has also called for creating a new government task force to
analyze opportunities for savings within the state budget.

DISCUSSION ON THE ACCESS TO EDUCATION IN MINORITY LANGUAGES HELD IN YEREVAN

Armradio.am
24.03.2010 14:40

Young representatives of national minorities, authorities and
civil society experts discussed today issues of equal rights, equal
opportunities for national minorities in Armenia focusing on access
to education in minority languages.

At this UN DPI-supported forum the participants also discussed the
specifics of implementation in Armenia of the European Charter for
Regional or Minority Languages, the Framework Convention for the
Protection of National Minorities, and UN International Human Rights
Covenants and Conventions.

UN DPI Representative Maria Dotsenko said: "Despite the fact
that the national minorities seem to be well integrated into the
mainstream society and are enjoying equal rights with their fellow
ethnic Armenians, there are some sensitive issues connected to the
preservation or renaissance of their respective languages, specifics
of organization of the education on their ethnic languages, training
of teachers and supply of textbooks."

Mrs. Hranush Kharatyan, Head of Anthropology Chair of the State
University of Linguistics said: "Proper organization of education
requires not only enthusiasm and good will of communities, but
also support from the state, long-term planning and solid financial
investments."

During the discussion, the participants raised a variety of issues,
while the experts and authorities gave recommendations on how to deal
with them in the framework of the responsibilities that Armenia has
committed itself.

The event is the second one of the series, initiated by the UN DPI
Yerevan within the framework of International Year of Youth: Dialogue
and Mutual Understanding and International Year for the Rapprochement
of Cultures.

ARMENIAN AMBASSADOR AND LEBANESE TOURISM MINISTER DISCUSS PROSPECTS OF BILATERAL COOPERATION IN TOURISM SECTOR

Noyan Tapan
March 24, 2010

BEIRUT, MARCH 24, NOYAN TAPAN. The Armenian Ambassador to Lebanon
Ashot Kocharian on March 23 met with the Tourism Minister of Lebanon
Fadi Abboud.

The RA MFA Press and Information Department reports that the sides
discussed the prospects of bilateral cooperation in the tourism
sector. They expressed confidence that the friendly relations between
Armenia and Lebanon and the availability of air communication between
Yerevan and Beirut create a good opportunity for organization of
mutual visits, development of tourist packages, and holding business
forums and days of culture.

F. Abboud expressed a willingness to invite his Armenians partners
and heads of tourist agencies with the aim of discussing the possible
mechanisms of cooperation. He expressed a high opinion about the role
and active involvement of the Armenian community in the social and
political life of Lebanon.

UNIBANK TO RAISE CREDIT PORTFOLIO BY 35% IN 2010

ArmInfo
22.03.2010

ArmInfo. Unibank is expected to increase credit portfolio by 35%
to 90 billion drams till the end of the year, Unibank press-service
told ArmInfo. As of late Feb 2010, the credit portfolio of the bank
amounted to nearly 66.5 billion drams, including 39.8 billion drams
business loans.

The source reported that Unibank will further focus on lending to
individuals in 2010 offering new conditions of mortgage and auto
lending. In late Feb 2010 the mortgage portfolio of the bank amounted
to 12 billion drams and the portfolio of auto loans totaled 8 billion
drams.

AT the same time, lending through plastic cards of Unibank doubled
per year and totaled 2.2 billion drams in late Feb 2010. The bank
issued nearly 37,000 cards as of early Feb 2010, including 73% were
Visa International. The number of the bank’s POS-terminals at various
sales and service points totals 674. The bank serves also 65 ATMs.

Unibank increased lending almost 43% for 2009 to 66.7 billion drams.

Assets grew 58% for 2009 and exceeded 108.6 billion drams as of Jan
1 2010.

On Jan 1 2010 the bank’s shareholders were Asset Management and EVA
Invest holding by 50% shares.

THIS IS… HOW WE LIVE
Lara Garibian

Asbarez
s-is%e2%80%a6-how-we-live/
Mar 22nd, 2010

I had the pleasure of meeting Sara Anjargolian for breakfast recently
to discuss her upcoming photography exhibit and book release called
"How We Live," which documents life on the margins in Armenia. When I
met with Sara, I didn’t know very much about the project other than
it involved photography and an upcoming event. What I thought would
be an interview with an artist, turned out to be an interview with a
humanitarian who has elevated peoples’ lives, art, and social service
to a new level.

After graduating summa cum laude from UCLA with a BA in political
science and public policy, Sara went on to pursue a law degree and
received her Juris Doctorate at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall in 2000. To
unwind from the daily grind of law school, Sara started taking classes
in photography. Little did she know that she was laying the groundwork
for an incredible body of work that would touch so many peoples’ lives.

After passing the California bar and working as a trial attorney for
two years at the Justice Department in Washington D.C., Sara realized
she wanted more. As grateful as she was for her strong educational
background and opportunities, she was craving an adventure.

Adventure is just what she got. She received a Fulbright scholarship
in 2002 to live and work in Armenia. Although the grant was for a term
of ten months, Sara lived in Armenia for two and a half years. She
worked with Bars Media, a well-known documentary film studio in
Yerevan, and produced several documentaries about contemporary issues
in Armenia. She also learned a great deal about visual storytelling
and photography. In the years she lived in Armenia, she was able to
experience and document the country from a viewpoint most people never
see. She also put her law degree to good use during her last year in
Armenia when Sara served as an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean
at the American University of Armenia’s law department. In late 2004,
Sara decided to return to California. Since then, she has been working
as an attorney with the City of Los Angeles.

After she returned to Los Angeles, Sara continued to pursue
social impact documentary photography projects and would take every
opportunity to travel back to Armenia. A project she has been working
on for the last two years, called "Not Here," documents the global
story of labor migration through the stories of nine separated families
living between Los Angeles and Yerevan.

Sara met, interviewed, and photographed men and women who had
immigrated to Los Angeles, some illegally, and were working in the
shadows to be able to support their families back home in Armenia. She
found that despite the difficult circumstances of their lives, the
migrants in Los Angeles and their families back home in Armenia,
had a strong yearning to be heard and to tell their stories. She
also realized that she was the only link some of these families
had to each other. When asked about how the families felt about
their lives being so intimately captured by her camera, Sara said:
"They wanted to be heard, they wanted to tell me the details of their
lives. Many of the labor migrants I met live their lives daily within
the confines of the same four walls. This gave them a validity they
lacked within their day-to-day life."

It was during this process when Antranig Kasbarian, Executive Director
of the Tufenkian Foundation, approached Sara in 2009 and proposed
a new project. The Tufenkian Foundation, which has been working
in Armenia for over a decade promoting social justice and serving
vulnerable families, noticed a rapid rise in poverty in Armenia. The
World Bank reported in 2009 that for the first time in over a decade,
poverty was on the rise in Armenia, with 28% of the population living
in circumstances of extreme poverty. The Foundation wanted to raise
awareness about the situation and wanted to do it through photography
and visual storytelling.

Sara accepted the opportunity, went back to Armenia in July of 2009
for a period of three weeks, and documented the lives of fifteen
families living along society’s margins in Armenia.

It’s no surprise that the photos she returned with speak volumes. She
has managed to capture images that come to life in color and detail.

They jump out at you from the page, bringing humanity and life to the
person who is living this story. She went beyond the darkness that
generally represents poverty – families unable to meet basic food,
shelter, and healthcare needs. Sara’s goal was to show that the people
she photographed were as human as we are. And that is how the title
"How We Live" came into being. While Sara captured poverty, alcoholism,
domestic violence, malnutrition and the barest form of survival,
she had a much larger plan in mind. Her goal for this project is to
eliminate the separation people feel when introduced to the lives of
people who are different, less fortunate, and far away.

It is the feeling of "us" and "them" she hopes to eradicate with the
upcoming art exhibit and book release.

Sara also had the privilege of working with three other amazing people
on this project. Narineh Mizaeian is a Los Angeles based designer
who has received her degree in Architecture. She is currently an
Associate at Frank Gehry’s firm where she is working on a number of
projects that extend as far as Abu Dhabi. Narineh is the designer and
curator of the "How We Live" exhibit and she has designed something
incredibly original and cutting-edge. The exhibit features over 40
large prints, measuring 5×7 feet, suspended by an intricate tensile
network which draw the viewer into the lives of the people depicted
and which represent the larger issues of societal connectedness or
increasing disconnect. The "How We Live" exhibit design is conceived
as an experience, demanding the viewer to delve into the lives of
those photographed. The people and places captured in the photographs
are emphasized, employing the same gravity as the exhibit viewer and
occupying the same place and time.

Karlo Gharabegian, who is a four-time Emmy winner currently with CBS,
is also involved in bringing "How We Live" to life. He is creating a
short documentary that incorporates Sara’s photographs and the raw
video interviews she shot with the families, to tell the story of
the current poverty crisis in Armenia, and the process of creating
"How We Live."

Mary Minassians designed the "How We Live" book, which is a hardcover
book of photography being published by the Tufenkian Foundation,
and which features Sara’s photographs and their accompanying stories.

Having a strong background in graphic design and having worked on
projects for Disney, The Simpsons, and also a documentary called Beyond
Commitment, Mary engrossed herself in the "How We Live" project and
utilized her extraordinary aesthetic abilities in communicating the
experience of living on the margins in Armenia in the pages of what
promises to be a beautiful and moving book.

The collaborative efforts of these four talented individuals is highly
apparent, not just within the art, but within their hearts. "How
We Live" is truly a labor of love, as each has dedicated countless
hours to create something beautiful that has brought social impact
photography and art to a whole new level. Be sure to look for
the upcoming photo essay and behind the scenes coverage about the
creation of "How We Live." Also, mark your calendars for the "How We
Live" exhibit opening, Saturday, March 27th, 2010, at 7pm at Casitas
Studios, 3229 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039. For more information
about the exhibit please visit You can also visit
to see more of Sara’s photography and work.