EcoLur
'Teghout Support' civic initiative has circulated a press release, which contains an open letter to the US Secretary of State John Kerry and Permanent under Secretary and Head of the Diplomatic Service Simon Fraser. The initiative letter particularly demands “…to stop the interference of dimplomatic representatives of these countries into the operation private mining companies in Armenia and to investigate their operation for the compliance with the law. The problem is that the US and UK Ambassadors to Armenia exercise continuing pressure on the Armenian Government for the purpose of serving business interests of a private mining company - Lydian International Compny registered in an offshore zone. These actions contradict to the Vienna Convention “On Diplomatic Relations”, particularly Article 41 referring to diplomatic norms and ethics rules,” the letter says…
“Lydian International” Inc has offered to the Government of Armenia a mine exploitation project that breaches a number of national laws, including the RA Law on Lake Sevan, the RA Law on Fauna, the RA Law on Flora, the RA Law on Subsoils and other legal acts.
The RA Government, with its decree 1787-N of July 18, 2013 has approved the “Water Catchment Area Mapping of Lake Sevan” which directly implies that exploitation of Amoulsar is impossible as almost all the territory of Amoulsar is included in the water catchment zone of Lake Sevan, which is protected by the Law on Lake Sevan. The law stipulates that any industrial, including mining activity is prohibited in the areas with direct impact on Lake Sevan.
Without delving into details of this project that relate specifically to the fact that the potential exploitation of the gold mine at Amoulsar is fraught with disastrous environmental risks and economic losses, we would like to emphasize that there are numerous official documents that indicate the illegality of exploiting this mine. We are ready to provide copies of these documents to you upon request…
We believe that participation of some US-based investors in any economic project cannot serve a sufficient ground for the US diplomatic mission to make such a grave interference in a conflict-prone project…”, - the letter particularly says.
The letter also says that “The full version of the letter is published on the webpage of 'Teghout Support' civic initiative, www.teghut.am. The contact person of the initiative for this letter is Arthur Grigoryan - [email protected], [email protected].
October 21, 2013 at 12:42