Armenia not yet sending resolution to UN to condemn 1915 genocide
By Tigran Liloyan
-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 21, 2005 Thursday 11:57 AM Eastern Time
YEREVAN, April 21 — Armenia does not yet intend to submit to the
United Nations a draft resolution condemning the 1915 genocide of
Armenians in the Ottoman empire, Vartan Oskanyan, the Armenian foreign
minister, said on Thursday upon the conclusion of the international
conference “Ultimate Crime. Ultimate Challenge. Human Rights and
Genocide”. “The time is not yet ripe for this,” the minister said. The
forum was devoted to the 90th anniversary of the events that took
the toll of 1.5 million.
The minister spoke highly of the participation in the Yerevan
forum of Juan Mendez, the special adviser to the United Nations
secretary-general on the prevention of genocide, as well as of
historians, jurists and public figures from twenty countries. The
United Nations has not yet adopted the resolution on the genocide
of Armenians, but the tragic events at the beginning of last century
were mentioned in the report presented in the 80s, the minister said.
“Armenia is ready for normal relations with Turkey without any
preliminary conditions, and all the outstanding questions can be
discussed in this framework,” the minister said. He believes, “The
time has come to normalize relations” between the two neighbour
countries. The territorial issue, the problem of the return to
Armenia of its historic territories seized by Turkey in the early
20th century, “is not on the agenda of the republic’s foreign policy,”
the minister said.
The Armenian foreign minister has no doubt that the conference in
Yerevan will be of importance for the international recognition of
the genocide of Armenians. “There is a need for consistent work,
bit-by-bit,” Oskanyan said.