President of Nagorno-Karabakh Bako Sahakyan attended the gala dinner party in the U.S. city of Pasadena organized within the framework of Telethon 2010.

Baku Sahakyan stressed great role of world-spread Armenians in development and strengthening of the Motherland, especially Artsakh, NKR presidential press service informed NEWS.am.

“During the last 15 years different programs worth of dozen millions of dollars have been carried out in Artsakh through the channels of the “Hayastan” All-Armenian fund. The people of Artsakh are grateful for such an attentive attitude.

A year ago all the Armenians united their efforts around the idea of restoring and developing Shoushi - one of the ancient Armenian towns. Reconstruction activities there have already started and entered an active stage. We are confident that this town will undoubtedly become modern and prosperous.

The issue of drinking water is also among the most significant problems Artsakh has ever faced. It is of vital political and socioeconomic importance. Our people still meet great difficulties in satisfying their minimal needs in drinking water. Serious shortage of water is felt in capital Stepanakert, regional centers and the countryside. People are obliged to solve their daily vital problems with great difficulty. Only several districts in the capital and a number of settlements have twenty-four-hour water supply in our republic, which we managed to do only recently.

Of course, the Artsakh authorities try to ease the problems of the population as far as possible. We have registered certain successes in this sphere.

Friends, together we are able to solve this issue. The Artsakh Republic has enormous water resources. The Tartar, Arpa, Vorotan and other large rivers have their origin there. In Artsakh only surface water flow constitutes 19 thousand cubic meters per capita, with the waters of the Araks River this figure exceeds 65 thousand cubic meters. Within this context our republic belongs to the richest countries of the world in terms of water resources. What we need to do is just use this wealth properly and build modern water supply systems,” he said.