ARMENIA SAYS IRANIAN PRESIDENT CUTS SHORT 2-DAY VISIT
By Avet Demourian, Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
October 23, 2007 Tuesday 10:53 AM GMT
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cut short his two-day visit
to Armenia on Tuesday and returned to neighboring Iran, an Armenian
presidential spokesman said.
The Armenian government had expected Ahmadinejad to address parliament
and, in what was likely to cause controversy, plant a sapling at a
memorial commemorating the victims of what Armenians consider genocide.
He also had planned to visit the 18th century Blue Mosque in central
Yerevan, which was rebuilt with Iranian funding after the fall of
the Soviet Union in 1991.
But Ahmadinejad told Armenian President Robert Kocharian late
Monday that he needed to skip Tuesday’s planned events because of
unexpected developments in Iran that needed immediate attention,
Armenian presidential spokesman Viktor Sogomonian said. The spokesman
gave no details.
No unexpected developments have been reported in Iran that could
explain Ahmadinejad’s early departure.
The visit to the genocide memorial was the most sensitive part of his
agenda, and he may have wanted to avoid the ceremony there so as not
to risk causing tensions in relations with Turkey.
Scholars view the World War I-era killing of 1.5 million Armenians,
who were Christians, as the first genocide of the 20th century. But
debate on a resolution in the U.S. Congress that would recognize the
killings as genocide has angered Turkey, which says the toll has been
inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
Ahmadinejad avoided taking sides on the issue Monday in a speech
before Armenian university students, saying only that Iran condemns
any crimes against humanity.
He has caused outrage in the past by suggesting that the Holocaust
is a "myth" invented by Jews. An estimated 6 million Jews were killed
during the Holocaust.
Ahmadinejad and Kocharian held talks Monday and struck several
agreements to bolster economic ties between the two neighboring
nations. They discussed plans to build a railway link and two
hydroelectric power plants on the border river, Araks.
The projects are important for landlocked Armenia, which has struggled
with power shortages and transport blockades since the collapse of
the Soviet Union. Neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey have shut their
borders with Armenia in the wake of a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh,
a breakaway region of Azerbaijan controlled by ethnic Armenians.
Kocharian’s spokesman said the president was not disturbed by
Ahmadinejad’s early departure because they had managed to cover all
the necessary issues during their talks Monday.