Vartan Oskanian’s Speech at the Independence Celebration in Washington

ASBAREZ, 10/28/2006

More than 500 Armenian political party leaders, community organization
representatives, religious leaders, dignitaries and government
officials, among them Armenia’s Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian
attended a banquet organized by the Armenian Embassy on Oct. 21
marking the 15th anniversary of Armenia’s independence the Omni
Shoreham Hotel. Among the speakers at the event were Foreign Minister
Oskanian and the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of
America, Ken Hachigian. This week we present the text of the two
speeches.

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 believethat 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 Karabakh 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 thata 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 responsibilitiesof 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.
8 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

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress