Apparently, Azerbaijan became just another victim of the "Dutch disease" peculiar to the countries, which rely only on oil exports and in no way think about what results the whole situation might have. According to Baku media outlets, compared with the corresponding period in 2008, exports of oil in 2009 have decreased by 2,9 times, and its cost by 4 times. In January-November of the current year, Azerbaijan exported 25 575 334.6 tons of crude oil for the price of $10 700 483.9. The crude oil was exported by the Marketing and Economic Operations Office of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR).

Major events of the past week were the visit of the NKR parliamentary delegation to Armenia, the arrival of Turkish journalists and the inner-party conflicts in the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party of Armenia. As usual several sharp statements were made by ARF Dashnaktsutyun. A number of political scientists assessed the current state of Armenian-Turkish relations. There was also the anticipated reaction from the Republican Party of Armenia in relation to its party members - the RA National Assembly MPs, who had spoken in support of Sasun Mikaelyan.

The crisis taught lessons to Armenia and highlighted its main shortcomings: weak diversification and lack of competitiveness, therefore, to overcome the effects of the crisis the country should provide three essential conditions, head of World Bank Armenian Office Aristomene Varoudakis said. According to him, in order to increase competitiveness of Armenian economy the country need to creating more favorable environment for investors, reduce the role of oligopolies, minimize, or even eliminate corruption in tax authorities, develop infrastructures, particularly in transport and IT spheres," he said.

A couple of years ago I had a chance of an interview with Robert Sahakyants and one could not assume at that time that he would leave the world so soon. We all knew he was ill, but no one suspected how serious the illness was. He was one of those without whom, in his opinion, everything would sink in sweet syrup. All that you'll read further are his direct words, as we thought no one could speak of Robert Sahakyants and the world surrounding him better than he himself. For some reason he always spoke Russian, although he knew his native language perfectly well. Call it freak of a genius if you like, but now that he is gone words, however beautiful they might be, are needless.