PERMANENT MISSION OF ARMENIA TO THE UNITED NATIONS
Contact: Dziunik AGHAJANIAN
Minister-Counsellor
Deputy Permanent Representative
119 East 36th Street, New York, NY 10016, USA
Tel: 1-212-686-9079
Fax: 1-212-686-3934
E-mail: armenia@un.int
Web:

January 24, 2005

PRESS RELEASE

MINISTER OSKANIAN ADDRESSES UN SPECIAL SESSION

Armenia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian was among a select
group of foreign ministers who addressed the UN 28th Special Session, on the
60th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps. The
session was held just a few days before the 60th anniversary of the
liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, by Soviet troops, near the
end of World War II.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke about the role of the UN, which was
founded immediately following the Second World War. The massive violations
of human rights during the war were an impetus for the formation of this
international institution, 60 years ago, he explained.

The Secretary General was followed by Holocaust Survivor, writer, Nobel
Prize Winner for Peace, Professor Elie Wiesel, and former UN Undersecretary
Sir Brian Urquhart. Elie Wiesel evoked images of the horrors that
concentration camp inmates had to endure, and repeatedly expressed amazement
at humanity’s capacity for such evil, and for such indifference. Sir Brian,
then a member of the Allied Forces that liberated the camps, stressed
humanity’s collective responsibility in the prevention of genocides and in
bringing to justice the perpetrators.

They were followed by Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister of Israel, the
Special Representative of Poland, Mr. Bronislaw Geremek, Vladimir Lukin, the
Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation, Paul Wolfowitz, US
Deputy Secretary of Defense, Jean Asselborn, the Minister of Foreign Affairs
of Luxembourg, on behalf of the European Union, and Marcello Pera, Speaker
of the Italian Senate.

Together with Minister Oskanian, also on the rostrum were other foreign
ministers: Joschka Fischer, Germany, Michel Barnier, France, Pierre
Pettigrew, Canada, Ilinka Mitreva, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as
well as representatives of Greece, Romania, Norway, Austria, Hungary, the
Netherlands and Great Britain.