Agence France Presse
April 26, 2004 Monday
Armenia to contribute to reconstruction in Iraq
YEREVAN
Armenia, which has up to 40,000 ethnic Armenians living in Iraq, said
Monday that it would dispatch a small military team to participate in
the reconstruction of the war-torn country.
Armenia will send 30 trucks, 11 sappers and three military doctors to
the country, its chief of staff, General Mikael Arutyunyan, said
following talks with Charles Wald, deputy commander of US forces in
Europe.
“Let us not forget that we have an Armenian diaspora” in Iraq,
Artyunyan said.
Tens of thousands of people fled Armenia, which lies some 600
kilometres (375 miles) north of Iraq, in the bloody unrest that
surrounded the final years of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and later
during the war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.