YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 5, NOYAN TAPAN. The preservation state of cultural values in Armenia is in harmony with the current state of the country. Thus Armenak Khachatrian, the Deputy Head of the Agency for Preservation of Cultural Values under the RA Ministry of Culture, described the sphere, he is in charge of, at the "Urbat" club on February 4. In his words, the problems on the preservation of cultural values are of "conservative" character. "For many years the specialists of this sphere, who are devotees, have tried to provide as much as possible the return of every valuable speciman temporarily being exported from the country." At present, 6 million moveable cultural values, that is to say, pictures, sculptures, specimen of applied arts, photos, books, to name but a few, are being preserved in the 67 state depositories of Armenia. In the estimation of Khachatrian, the RA Law on "Export and Import of Cultural Values", adopted in 2004, is made very much liberal in comparison with 1994. The previous law was very rough, had numerous flaws, "hindered the activities of citizens." At present, individual citizens can take any value of 50 years of antiquity belonging to them out of the country, if it is signed by the author. A. Khachatrian considered the lack of experts and experimental laboratories as the most important problem existing in this sphere. "At present, experimental examination is being made only through visual observation," he stressed. A. Khachatrian stated that no case was recorded during his tenure, when temporarily exported cultural values were not returned. He also stated that 19 moveable exhibits, which are included in the list of specially preserved exhibits, are not to be exported from Armenia: three of them are in the History Museum of Armenia and 16 in Matenadaran (Armenian repository of ancient manuscripts).

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