EXPEDITION TO MOUNT ARARAT PLANNED
YEREVAN, MAY 1, ARMENPRESS

"Armenians will be provided with complete security this July during a planned climbing to the top of Mount Ararat," told reporters Ismail-bey Alibi oghli, head of Turkish Kavkas Mutseverat travel agency.

The expedition, co-organised also by two Armenian travel agencies 'Akint' and 'Megraget', will be dedicated to the Salvation Day, July 17th, when Noah's ark moored to the mountain Ararat. The main group consists of 33 people, who are of different religion and professions, historians, biologists, geologists. They will be accompanied by an auxiliary detachment
of 17 people: mountaineer-rescuers, cinema group, musicians, painters.

The tour will take a fortnight, two days of which will be spent in Yerevan. The ascent and descend will take 10 days, as scientific researches are to be carried out during the climbing.

"We have been working at this project for already two years", said head of 'Megraget' travel agency Ghazar Mirzoyan to Armenpress. "It was from this mountain that God gave a new life to people, and ascending it will become a
symbol of a unified humanity", he said.

As Mr. Mirzoyan noted, the government of Turkey has given its preliminary consent, without which ascending Ararat will be impossible. However, the government of Armenia hasn't responded to this undertaking yet.

The late prime minister Vazgen Sargisian was keen on this project and promised his help, but after his tragic death in the parliament nobody in the government has taken the responsibility for it.

Gladly both Armenian Catholicoses, Garegin II, Supreme Patriarch of All Armenians and Aram I, head of Cilicia Great House, and also Patriarch of Istanbul, Archbishop Mutafian have blessed the expedition. Pope of Rome
John Paul II is also expected to give his blessings to the expedition.