ARMENIAN PRESIDENT HANDS OVER PRIZE TO GERMAN AUTHOR

Yerkir
05.05.2006 15:22

YEREVAN (YERKIR) – President Robert Kocharian on Friday handed
over a prize to German author Edgar Hilsenrat for his significant
contribution to the process of the Armenian Genocide recognition,
the president’s press service said.

The prize was awarded by a presidential decree of April 15 for the
novel ” The Tale of the Last Thought.”

ARMENIAN FOUNDATION RAISING FUNDS FOR KARABAKH’S RECONSTRUCTION

Mediamax news agency
5 May 06

Yerevan, 5 May: Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said in Yerevan
today that the Ayastan All-Armenian Foundation is “a well-established
organization”.

Speaking at a session of the board of trustees of the foundation,
Robert Kocharyan suggested honouring the memory of the victims of
the ArmAvia plane that crashed over the sea near Sochi on 3 May,
Mediamax reported.

The Armenian president noted that the foundation celebrates its 14th
anniversary this year. The organization has implemented many programmes
“of vital importance to the country”.

Naira Melkumyan, executive director of the Ayastan All-Armenian
Foundation, said that the organization gathered 12.7m dollars in 2005
and has received 7.5 m dollars in four months of 2006.

The Ayastan All-Armenian Foundation implemented about 100 programmes
in Armenia and Artsakh [Nagornyy Karabakh] in 2005. In 2006, it
will focus on the Revival of Artsakh programme and 7.7m dollars have
already been collected for its implementation.

RPT BRUSSELS AIRPORT FIRE DESTROYS THREE A-320 AIRCRAFT – SABENA TECHNICS CEO

AFX Europe (Focus)
May 05, 2006

BRUSSELS (AFX) – A fire that ravaged a maintenance shed at Brussels
airport last night destroyed three planes, two of which belong to
Armenian operator Armavia, said the chief executive of Sabena Technics.

The other plane belonged to Greek charter airline Hellas. All of them
were A-320 aircraft.

Also destroyed was an aircraft used in the Belgian military.

MOURNERS THROW WREATHS INTO BLACK SEA TO COMMEMORATE PLANE CRASH VICTIMS
Mike Eckel

AP Worldstream
May 05, 2006

Hundreds of relatives and friends of the victims of the Armenian
airliner crash sailed into the Black Sea on Friday and watched somberly
as wreaths of blue, white and red flowers were lowered into the waters
to commemorate the 113 people killed in the disaster.

Some, weeping and clutching photos of their loved ones, tossed their
own carnations, roses and chrysanthemums into the waters at the site
of Wednesday’s crash some six kilometers (four miles) off the southern
Russian resort of Sochi.

Hope dimmed that searchers would recover the bodies of more than half
of the victims as authorities tried to pinpoint the precise location
of the plane’s flight recorders under nearly 700 meters (2,300 feet)
of water.

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, head of the emergency
commission formed in the wake of the crash, said 53 bodies have
been pulled from the water and 41 of them identified. He also said
authorities were beginning to collect DNA samples from relatives
of the dead, indicating three was little hope of finding easily
identifiable remains.

Searchers have located radio signals from the Airbus A-380’s two “black
box” flight recorders, but Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu
said difficult conditions were hampering efforts to precisely locate
the boxes and the large part of the fuselage where many victims are
believed to be trapped.

A special diving vehicle was sent to the site to try to pinpoint the
remains of the plane’s fuselage on the sea floor and Levitin said
authorities were searching both in Russia and abroad for equipment
to raise the fuselage.

“I want to say, for us the main element is raising the bodies, because
we understand that for the victims’ relatives not raising the bodies
or fragments would be an even bigger tragedy,” Levitin told reporters.

The plane plunged into the sea in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday in
heavy rain and poor visibility as it was approaching the airport in
Adler, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Sochi, a city wedged
between the sea and soaring, snowcapped mountains.

At one of Sochi’s city morgues, relatives _ mainly men _ paced
nervously, voicing frustration at the recovery effort. Some peered
stone-faced at photographs of mutilated and mangled victims, posted
by the coroner to help in identifying them.

“We don’t care about any black boxes. Finding them changes nothing.
OK, maybe the pilot made a mistake. He’s dead now. And so is everyone
else. They’re all dead. That’s not going to change” said Misha, 39,
who like many Armenians in Sochi, did not give his name fearing police
harassment. “We just want them to give us something of our relatives.”

Lernik Aryuntyan, 52, said he lost his entire family in the 1988
earthquake that devastated Armenia. Then, he was able to find his
family’s remains within three days; now he knows nothing of an elderly
neighbor who died in the crash.

“Give us anything, something small _ a coat, a shoe _ just so we have
something,” Aryuntyan said.

In Adler, along a seaside promenade lying almost directly in the flight
approach to the airport, black-robed Armenian priests and monks led
mourners in a procession. Later, a musician stood outside the town’s
Armenian church, playing traditional Armenian mourning dirges on a
duduk, a clarinet-like instrument. Most of the victims were Armenians.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

PRESIDENT SAYS GEORGIA WILL NOT BE COWED BY RUSSIAN “BLACKMAIL”

Rustavi-2 TV, Tbilisi
5 May 06

[Presenter] President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has just returned from
Vilnius, has commented on Georgian-Russian relations. He made these
comments on the way to the Armenian Embassy in Tbilisi.

[Saakashvili] Our nation should show courage and firmness. In
absolutely no circumstances should we show these people frightened
faces or any kind of retreat because as soon as they see that, as
soon as they smell blood, they will devour us. We will not show them
our weaknesses. This is not just the government’s task, it is a task
for all of us, the Georgian people. So far the Georgian people have
shown that they do not intend to be cowed by blackmail.

We want neighbourly, warm, equal relations with Russia. I have just
return from Lithuania, which faced the same sort of pressure in the
1990s, yet today Lithuania lives three or four times better than
Russia does with all its oil and gas. That is a lesson for us. A
strong nation stood together, they did not pick on each other, but
they were able to withstand this pressure. I think we will be able
to do it more easily than the Lithuanians because we have already
created some kind of economic basis, we have already found markets.

These days it is no longer so easy for them to talk to Lithuania
in that kind of language. Now they are using it on us. I think the
Baltic States and Eastern Europe should be an example to everyone
that such threats only strengthen and consolidate every proud nation.

I do not think there is a single politician in Russia who doubts that
Georgia is a proud nation. It is much easier to get on with a proud
nation if you treat it calmly, with friendship, outstretched hands
and courtesy. When have we ever refused that?

ABKHAZIA WANTS FULL INVOLVEMENT IN RUSSIA-GEORGIA-ARMENIA RAIL CONSORTIUM

Apsnypress
5 May 06

Sukhumi, 5 May: Abkhazia will be a fully-fledged member of the
international consortium of Black Sea railways, Abkhaz prime minister
Aleksandr Ankvab said at a news conference held at the Apsnypress
news agency today.

A protocol on the creation of the consortium, which will include
Abkhazia, Georgia, Russia and Armenia, was signed in Moscow on 4 May
by representatives of the four sides.

Ankvab stressed that Abkhazia would never agree to anything detrimental
to its interests. The prime minister thinks that, from the economic
point of view, the restoration of the rail service through Abkhazia is
a very advantageous project for the republic. He added that Abkhazia
would not be able to maintain the railway on its own because the
railway “is not in its best condition, and its material and technical
resources are not up to modern standards”.

“This consortium will be a purely commercial structure which will
have nothing to do with politics,” Ankvab said. “We will not accept
any political demands. We are not selling our independence and no-one
will be able to force us to do so,” he added.

RA PRESIDENT AWARDS PRIZE FOR SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION IN AFFAIR OF RECOGNITION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE TO EDGAR HILSENRAT

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
May 05 2006

YEREVAN, MAY 5, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. RA President Robert
Kocharian handed at the May 5 sitting of the “Hayastan” (Armenia)
All-Armenian Fund the prize for significant contribution in the
affair of recognition of the Armenian Genocide to German writer Edgar
Hilsenrat. Noyan Tapan was informed about it by the RA President’s
Press Office. By the President’s April 15 decree, it was awarded to
the poet for his novel “The Tale of the Late Thought”.

CIS SECURITY BODY CHIEF CALLS FOR COOPERATION WITH UZBEKISTAN

UzReport.com website, Tashkent
5 May 06

The heads of the member states of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization [CSTO] are ready to deepen cooperation with Uzbekistan,
the secretary-general of the CSTO, Nikolay Bordyuzha said in Minsk
on Thursday [4 May].

He is taking part in the away session of the international
antiterrorist media forum which is taking place in the capital of
Belarus, RIA Novosti reported.

“An idea of joint activities with Uzbekistan in a number of specific
issues found a complete support of the presidents of all CSTO members
states,” Bordyuzha said.

Bordyuzha said that after meeting Uzbek President Islom Karimov,
during which an agreement on deepening cooperation in a number of
spheres was reached, he also visited leaders of the CSTO member states.

“The presidents believe that we should cooperate with Uzbekistan in
the sphere of countering political and religious extremism, providing
stability in the Central Asian region,” the secretary-general of the
CSTO noted.

As a specific example of cooperation he demonstrated consultations of
the secretaries of the security councils of CSTO of the central Asian
region and Uzbekistan that were held in Dushanbe, and during which
“specific joint measures on ensuring stable situation in Central Asia
were discussed”.

Uzbekistan, Bordyuzha emphasized, as a big and powerful state in the
region, very seriously influences the political situation.

The secretary-general of the CSTO believes that if the steps that
are being made bring the member states of the organization and
Uzbekistan to a new level of cooperation, then, he does not “exclude
a possibility, if Uzbekistan is interested, of its joining the CSTO”.

However, Bordyuzha noted, for Uzbekistan, that had once joined the
collective security treaty, “it is not serious to do hasty steps now
and to join the CSTO”.

“Only joint activities of all states will ensure stability in Central
Asia, particularly, when the situation is getting tense there,”
Bordyuzha underlined.

The CSTO member states are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Russia and Tajikistan.
From: Baghdasarian

VAHAGN MELIKIAN TO TAKE PLACE OF ARSHAK POLADIAN ON POST OF RA AMBASSADOR TO UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
May 05 2006

YEREVAN, MAY 5, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. By President Robert
Kocharian’s May 4 decree, Arshak Poladian was discharged the
obligations of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
of the Republic of Armenia to the United Arab Emirates and Vahagn
Melikian was appointed on that post (residence in Abu Dhabi). Noyan
Tapan was informed about it by the President’s Press Office. Vahagn
Melikian occupied formerly the post of the RA Foreign Ministry’s
“State Protocol Service” agency, which he was discharged on May 4.

ARTUR BAGHDASARIAN: “WE’LL CONTINUE STRUGGLING FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF EUROPEAN VALUES IN ARMENIA”

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
May 05 2006

YEREVAN, MAY 5, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. “We observe the five
years of Armenia’s membership to the Council of Europe as years of
stable progress,” Armenian National Assembly Speaker Artur Baghdasarian
stated at the May 5 conference “Armenia and the Council of Europe:
Five Years of Membership.”

According to him, during this period of time, Armenia has actively
been engaged in implementation of the obligations undertaken in
front of the Council of Europe: “We’ll continue our activity and
will go on struggling for establishment of the European values in
Armenia.” According to Armen Rustamian, the Chairman of the Parliament
Standing Committee on Foreign Relations, a member of the Armenian
delegation to the CE Parliamentary Assembly, it is quiet obvious that
without the close cooperation with the Council of Europe, Armenia would
be few steps behind in its democratic development that it is today. He
mentioned that more and more people in Armenia realize necessity of
holding democratic reforms and see Armenia’s place in the European
peoples’ family. At the same time, Armen Rustamian pointed out not
high speeds of implementation of reforms, what, according to him,
will push development of democracy behind. “The main task is the way
to the European values and raising speeds of reforms during it,”
Armen Rustamian stated. According to him, within the framework of
its further membership to the Council of Europe, Armenia must pay its
attention to issues of raising efficiency in the system of management,
to the active anti-corruption struggle and etc.