PRESS RELEASE
The Heritage Party
31 Moscovian Street
Yerevan, Armenia
Tel.: (+374 – 10) 53.69.13
Fax: (+374 – 10) 53.26.97
Email: info@heritage.am; office@heritage.am
Website:
April 28, 2007
Raffi Hovannisian Addresses Transatlantic Forum
Meets with Verhofstadt, Scheffer, Breyer, Rehn, Yavlinskiy
Brussels — Raffi K. Hovannisian, who is participating in the
Brussels Forum for the second consecutive year, offered comments at
the Forum’s opening session, asserting that in direct furtherance of
the European-Atlantic community’s pursuit of universal benchmarks
of human rights and the rule of law, as well as common foreign and
security policies, the Western world must also practice its own
values by ensuring equal application in Europe and its neighborhood
of its policies, precedents, and standards of accountability to all
instances of conflict resolution–from Kosovo to Karabagh–and of
genocide past and present.
He also intervened in specialized sessions on Iran, Russia, and
Turkey. He urged his colleagues to meet the challenge of European
values and membership by bravely facing their past and the collective
legacy of the great Armenian dispossession, and to ask themselves
whether Turkey will not lose Europe if the current mindset remains
in power.
In the margins of this world conclave of movers and shakers,
Hovannisian discussed both domestic and international developments
with Secretary General Javier Solana of the European Union; Belgian
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt; Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt;
U.S. Senator Bob Bennett; U.S. Congressman Jim Costa of Fresno; NATO
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer; Canadian Foreign Minister
Peter MacKay; European Commissioner for Enlargement Dr. Olli Rehn;
Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court; and Grigoriy
Yavlinskiy, member of the Russian State Duma and chairman of the
Democratic Party YABLOKO.
The Brussels Forum is also being attended by Armenian Foreign Minister
Vardan Oskanyan.
Founded in 2002, Heritage has regional divisions throughout the
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0002, Armenia, with telephone contact at (374-10) 536.913, fax at
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