Communist leader scoffs at calls to withdraw Russian troops from Armenia
Arminfo
16 Mar 05
YEREVAN
“Only the [Armenian] politicians registered in the Washington’s
personnel department today can speak about the need to withdraw
Russian troops from Armenia,” the first secretary of the Communist
Party of Armenia, Ruben Tovmasyan, has told an Arminfo
correspondent. He was commenting on frequent statements by some
politicians in the republic about the need of Armenia’s integration
into NATO and the withdrawal of the Russian contingent from Armenia.
Given such a bloodthirsty neighbour as Turkey, the demand for the
withdrawal of the Russian troops means initiating a repetition of 1915
[events in Ottoman Turkey described in Armenia as genocide]. “The
withdrawal of the Russian troops will means an end to Armenia,” the
leader of the Armenian communists stressed. He recalled that there had
been rises and declines in a 300-year-old history of the
Russian-Armenian relations, but at the same time these relations had
never cooled down.
The Western countries’ anti-Armenian position is an incontestable
fact, Tovmasyan said. In particular, none of the US leaders has ever
used the word “genocide” giving an assessment of the sad events in
western Armenia [northeastern Turkey] in the beginning of the last
century [1915].
Meanwhile, new steps have been taken in Russia for the international
recognition of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. For
example, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation this January
helped the Armenian communists to achieve a condemnation of the
genocide by the Union of the Communist Parties. The communist parties
of the former 15 Soviet republics called on their countries’
governments and also the international community to condemn the
Armenian genocide.
Tovmasyan said that the communist parties of foreign countries as well
as the socialist forces which have strong positions in a number of
Latin American and European countries are currently joining the
process of the recognition of the genocide.