YEREVAN, AUGUST 28, NOYAN TAPAN. The holding of the 4th Pan-Armenian Games is the greatest practical step for strengthening Armenia-Diaspora relations, the deputy chairman of the world committee of the Pan-Armenian Games Roland Sharoyan expressed an opinion at the August 28 press conference. In his words, along with numerous postive changes, a number of shortcomings have also been registered this year, particularly improper state of playing-fields and gyms because funds allocated for the Pan-Armenian Games were not sufficient for their improvement. To recap, the overall budget of the 4th Pan-Armenian Geams made about 80 million drams (235 thousand USD). R. Sharoyan considered it natural that a considerable part of medals was won by sportsmen from Armenia. "There are powerful sport bases in Armenia, and our sportsmen are always in a good shape," he said, adding that our compatriots from the Diaspora have been intensively preparing for competitions only for the last two months. Speaking about the incident during the basketball match between the teams of Yerevan and Cairo, the representative of the organizing committee said that the team of Yerevan has been deprived of the right to participate in the next Pan-Armenian Games. According to R. Sharoyan, it is envisaged that a similar decision will be taken with respect to the football team of Stepanakert.

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