The week in Armenia started with the commemoration of the victims of Spitak earthquake, which had claimed more than 25 thousand lives back in 1988. In connection with the 21st anniversary of the earthquake, top executives of the country visited the disaster area. However, in the political sense, all the attention of both the political establishment and the Armenian community was focused on the forthcoming meeting between the U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.

The Armenian parliament approved Thursday the 2010 draft national budget. The document was adopted with a vote of 82 for, 16 against and 1 abstention. Opposition parties - ARF Dashnaktsutyun and Heritage - voted against the document. Armenian National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan said the 2010 draft budget will help stabilize the economic situation in the republic. He said that AMD 1.7 billion will be allocated to pay off the deposits in soviet savings bank. Mr. Abrahamyan supported the Prime Minister's call for fighting oligopoly and pledged not to spare effort to prevent misuse of the state budget funds.

The policy of "zero relations with neighbours", which Turkey is trying to conduct without much success, has been effectively implemented in Egypt for over forty years now. And the matter is not only the unique peace-lovingness of the Egyptian government. The matter is simply the benefits to be gained. The Arab East is a very extensive, diverse and vague notion, and the fact that almost all the countries have entrusted especially Cairo to present their interests, means a lot.