SPEECH BY VARTAN OSKANIAN, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF ARMENIA

Panorama.am
14:40 25/10/06

At the 15th Anniversary Celebration Of Armenia’s Independence 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 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.

Washington DC October 21, 2006

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress