It's not only tourists who visit Armenia in the summer. International students, too, use the opportunity to see first hand what development and democratization are all about. This year, already, we've received a group of political science students from Boston's Northeastern University, led by Greg Aftandilian. Another group, this time international business students from Utah State University also came to Civilitas to talk about Armenia's political and economic challenges. This group of international business students came from the USU Huntsman School of Business. Civilitas and Vartan Oskanian have had a long and warm relationship with benefactor Jon Huntsman. Civilitas facilitates the Huntsman Scholarship program for Armenian undergraduates to study for a full four years at Utah State University. Mr. Huntsman has generously supported Civilitas and its outreach programs.

Sweden's Foreign Minister came visiting as well. He and Mr. Oskanian discussed domestic as well as regional matters and Mr. Bildt saw first hand some of Civilitas's new programs. He was struck by our greatest asset  -- our young, curious, intelligent staff.

It really is our staff, and our great network of friends and experts that allow us to do what we do. Next week, for example, we will begin a series of retrospective views on our 20 years of independence. We've invited three veteran Caucasus-watchers -- Laurence Broers of the UK's Conciliation Resources, Liz Fuller of Radio Free Europe, based in Prague, and Lawrence Sheets of International Crisis Group, based in Tbilisi. For two decades these political scientists and journalists have followed developments in and around Armenia, and will be talking about the Geopolitics of the Caucasus in these 20 years of transition. As part of our Norwegian-supported public forums, this discussion will take place on June 22 at 5 pm and will be live-streamed.

These forums, and our other programs will continue, but our real focus this summer is the planning of the September launch of an internet channel for news and analysis. Stay tuned, literally!