MINISTER OSKANIAN RECEIVED THE CIVILITAS 2007 AWARD FROM THE DAMA CASTELLANA ORGANIZATION

armradio.am
11.12.2007 10:57

In Conegliano Italy on December 9, 2007, Armenia’s Foreign Minister
Vartan Oskanian received the Civilitas 2007 award from the Dama
Castellana organization.

The award, established in 1992 by the Dama Castellana organization,
the town of Conegliano, the Province of Treviso, the Region of Veneto,
and the European Community, is intended for those individuals who
personify human values, tolerance, solidarity and whose work adds
quality to the life of the community and humanity.

Previous winners include Pope John Paul II (2004) and Rita Levi
Montalcini (2003), a Nobel Prize laureate and daughter of Primo Levi.

The official ceremony bestowing the award on Minister Oskanian took
place on Sunday, December 9. In the town hall, in the presence of local
and regional leaders, businessmen and dignitaries, as well as members
of Italy’s Armenian community, the announcement of the award was
made. This was followed by a procession towards the Academy Theater,
with participants dressed in traditional garb carrying the medieval
traditional banners of the region. At the Theater, Minister Oskanian
was awarded the prize for his work in promoting dialogue to achieve
peace and stability in the region and in the world. The Minister’s
acceptance speech appears below.

"I am honored to receive this award and feel privileged to be in
the distinguished company of today’s winners and the recipients of
former years.

I thought long about the significance of the Dama Castellana
conceiving of such an award, and thus creating the opportunity for
an annual message about the importance of dialogue and peace. This
respected organization takes very seriously its local heritage, and
understands the need to recall and evoke the past in order to assure
a well-grounded and meaningful life in the present.

So, it is because of the wisdom of the ages, that in a region
synonymous with viniculture, you are focusing on peace-making. Wine is
life, wine makes life, and depends necessarily on a life of peace and
stability. Making wine, sharing wine, enjoying wine all assume time,
all require a confidence in the future, all oblige patience and faith
in tomorrow. The world of wine takes peace for granted.

The original European dream, the glue that held together post-war
Europe, was for peace and prosperity. Today, you in Italy and
throughout Europe can take that peace for granted.

We in Armenia cannot.

We have lived under subjugation, have seen ethnic cleansing and
genocide even before the terms existed, and have lived as a minority
without rights.

We saw military aggression in response to peaceful calls for dialogue
and tolerance.

As a small people, serving as the perennial buffer between empires, on
the most trampled path on earth, Armenians have become living witnesses
of the benefit of dialogue between and within cultures. We have been
engaged in that international exchange for ages. Our Diaspora, living
as it does across borders, is both the means and the beneficiary of
international exchange.

Today, we in Armenia are among its greatest promoters, especially in
our neighborhood.

21st century Armenia belongs to a world where warring neighbors have
found that they can accept new borders based on realities on the ground
and move on. Europe’s nation-states have found that they can transcend
borders, without diminishing or ignoring cultural spaces, without
expecting historical identities to vanish. Armenia has the example
of some of the West’s oldest democracies, oldest developed economies,
some of the most stable states, coming together several decades ago,
voluntarily suspending some aspects of their sovereign political and
economic rights in order to build structures which would enhance and
consolidate their political and economic advantages, and diminishing
the threat of war.

Armenia has always said that we have already benefited from the process
that you have undergone. We share history, values and civilization,
we also share the goals of an integrated, interdependent, interrelated
European political and economic community.

For me personally, seeing the community that exists here, in
Conegliano, the political, social community that embraces visitors
with a passion, that is proud of its accomplishments in 50 years,
that is ready to serve as example and partner, this community offers
hope and inspires passion. From winemaking to tourism, there is much
that we can learn from you.

Armenia is known as the motherland of grapes and winemaking. Armenia’s
viticultural history goes back at least to Biblical times, when Noah
established the first vineyard in the Ararat Valley after the Flood.

Excavations in this area have lent strong support to the theory
that some of the very earliest systematic wine-growing did indeed
arise here.

This is one of many connections between Veneto and Armenia. Last year
we concluded a two-month long Days of Italy in Armenia. This year,
our ambassador in Rome is promoting several events that highlight
the centuries old connections between us. And there are many.

Let me use this opportunity to say thank you for the especially
large and meaningful assistance Italians provided to Armenians in
the devastating earthquake that destroyed much exactly 19 years ago
yesterday. This was not the cause but the manifestation of a special
relationship that goes back much farther. It was in Italy in 1512,
that Hakob Meghapart produced the first book ever published in
Armenian. Venetians signed their first interstate trade agreement
with Armenians, half a millennium ago. The renowned Briton, Lord
Byron, referred to the Venetian island of San Lazaro as a fortress
of Armenian independence, since the Armenian monks of the Order of
Mekhitar had found refuge there in the early 1700s. There you have
it all – cultural, economic, political – our ties are deep and broad.

Today, you point to the Mekhitarist congregation as an example of
the wealth of Venetian culture and heritage. Armenians point to the
Mekhitarist Congregation as Armenia’s representatives from the ages
when there was no Armenian state.

>From them, and from you, we have much to learn. I will take away
with me today the warmth of your friendship, the generosity of your
hospitality, the wisdom of your age. And all of this offered with ease.

It is sprezzatura. I wish for a long and deep dialogue so that
Armenians can discover this Italian art of effortless creation
that results in the ‘studied carelessness’ of Italian food and
Italian wine. I wish to replicate the accessibility, the immediacy,
the intimacy with the old even as the elegant new is continuously
created. I wish to appreciate the individual’s resolve to enjoy the
pleasures of life and the society’s understanding that such enjoyment
can only be had in a world of dialogue and peace.

I appreciate your trust in my own commitment to these values. The
Dama Castellana has put additional responsibility on me and on all
of us in Armenia to work harder for tolerance, solidarity and peace
in our region and in the world."