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Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia
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Minister Oskanian Speaks on 15th Anniversary of Independence in Washington
DC at Embassy Sponsored Gala Banquet

Speech by
H. E. Vartan Oskanian
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Republic of Armenia
At the 15th Anniversary Celebration
Of Armenia’s Independence
Washington DC
October 21, 2006

I am pleased, honored, and still a little awed by the fact that I can
stand before you, as foreign minister, at the official celebration of 15
years of Armenia’s independence. The fact that we are celebrating in this
important capital, with the representatives of a strong, active,
prosperous, proud and engaged Diaspora, in the presence of several of
Armenia’s ambassadors, is still the stuff of dreams.

It has been 15 years since our independence. This came at the end of a
difficult century and an even more difficult millennium. Armenians take
great pride in their millennia of history. The leitmotifs that run through
our recollections of our past are fraught with a search for silver
linings.

We have outlived the empires of the Babylonians and Assyrians, the
Hittites and Medes, the Byzantines, the Mongols and the Ottomans. We
shared the gods of the Greeks and the Romans, until St. Gregory
illuminated the path to Christianity. We translated the Bible not just
into Armenian, but also into Chinese. We recorded the history of Armenians
and of Western civilization in beautifully illuminated manuscripts. We
welcomed the Crusaders to our Kingdom in Cilicia, and accompanied European
traders to the exotic East. Instead of fortifications, we built
monasteries and centers of learning which have withstood invaders and
earthquakes.

In the 18th century, when first the American colonies, and later the
people of France were upholding liberty, equality and fraternity, our
students and merchants in Europe, were watching and learning. They knew
that they had rights and liberties as subjects of three different empires,
and used the formulations and vocabulary of the leaders of the Western
enlightenment to articulate them. It wasn’t that they wanted to overthrow
those governments which abused or usurped their rights, but to reform
them. It didn’t work.

The Sublime Porte, which ruled over the majority of Armenians, made its
Armenian minority the scapegoat for its own inability to govern. The
Genocide followed. The remnants of the Armenian people who emerged
following the Genocide had independence hoisted upon them in 1918. A
population of refugees, insufficient resources with which to govern and
protect, an elite that did not live in Armenia, and an army composed of
well-meaning patriots – that was Armenia’s first modern attempt at
independence. It was a valiant effort to first wrestle with the social and
existential dangers from within, and later to fight against the direct
physical threats from without. The First Republic of Armenia survived
independently long enough that, when it fell, it fell as a legitimate,
independent, political entity. That entity was subsumed into the Soviet
Union as the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.

That was the journey that brought us to today and to the improbability of
our independence – the improbability that this surviving nation would
witness the fall of yet another empire – this time Lenin’s. And that the
homeland would be born again, free and independent.

In Armenia, and in the Diaspora, too, where you are still overwhelmed at
the improbability of Armenia’s independence, you sometimes suffer from the
reverse: because we’ve never really had independence, we sometimes believe
that we don’t deserve to have it or that it will necessarily be taken away
again. I want to tell you that Armenians are not only worthy of
independence, we are also capable of independence, aware of the demands of
independence, responsive to the expectations of independence and accepting
of the burdens of independence.

But we were ready. Armenia’s Democratic Movement, the Environmental
Movement, the Karabagh Movement were not just the product of a changed
Soviet Union, but they also accelerated the transformation of the USSR.

Independence is borne of high ideals. We believed that freedom is the
secret to a prosperous nation, a healthy nation, a fair and just nation,
and a stable future. We believed that freedom isn’t just the right to do
what you want, it’s the opportunity to do what you want, it’s the
opportunity to make choices, the right choices.

We made the basic choice – we chose the way of a liberal society – open
markets and democratic institutions. That was the first choice.

And today, as we celebrate independence, we are celebrating that choice.
We are celebrating in Washington, the capital of the country that proved
that a liberal economy in a democratic republic is a winning combination.
Americans are the people who set out to design a political system that is
built around the individual, his liberties and capacities.

In other words, the American Declaration of Independence is about rights.
It is a testament to the rights of individuals, of peoples, of society.
But no man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time
saddled with a responsibility.

We are privileged to be the generation that is consolidating independence.
We do have wide and generous opportunities to turn a dream into a country,
a stable country with a promising future.

And to that end, I want to propose a declaration of responsibilities. Our
responsibilities. This generation’s responsibilities. The responsibilities
of Armenia and Diaspora, of all those who call themselves Armenian.

— We have a responsibility to empower our people to confidently
participate in building their democracy.

— We have a responsibility to create an even playing field for every
Armenian citizen.

— We have the responsibility to continue on the diffcult but necessary
path of political and economic reforms.

— We have a responsibility not to take Armenia for granted, but to work
to create an Armenia that makes real the promises of democracy and
freedom.

–We have a responsibility to remember our past, without being bound by
it, because the future is ours.

— We have a responsibility to reach a just and lasting resolution of the
Nagorno Karabakh conflict based on mutual compromise.

— We have a responsibility to make the Diaspora an extension of the
homeland – not a permanent dislocation, not a destructive dispersion.

— We have a responsibility to welcome and embrace every Diasporan who
calls himself or herself an Armenian.

— We have a responsibility to rally every bit of our resources –
individual and collective, private and public.

— We have a responsibility to stand united, to work united, to go forward
united in the face of new challenges, we can win together, and not lose
separately.

These responsibilities come with independence, with freedom, with liberty.
Demanding freedom means recognizing the responsibility to ourselves, for
ourselves. Freedom is also the right to make mistakes, to learn from those
mistakes. It remains for those who have greater experience in freedom to
be patient as we sort out the options and freely choose the one that is
right for us.

We believed that independence may be bestowed, but freedom must be
achieved. Independence meant rights. Liberty means responsibility.

Thank you.