YEREVAN. – On Saturday I will leave for Lebanon—Beirut, and I will get acquainted with the situation much more realistically on the spot. Zareh Sinanyan, High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs of Armenia, on Thursday said this in a conversation with journalists, referring to the issue of Armenians in Lebanon wishing to come to Armenia after Tuesday’s powerful and deadly explosion in Beirut.
"At the moment, it seems that the number of people who want to come to Armenia is really very large, but there is no objective, numerical calculation of those people, which makes our job a little more difficult," Sinanyan said.
According to him, there is an actual problem of coming to Armenia for people who do not have Armenian citizenship, or residency status in Armenia. "We must find a way for them, too, to be able to come to the homeland; it is not an absolute legal right, but it is an absolute moral right for any Armenian," the diaspora commissioner added.
When asked how many people from Lebanon have applied to come to Armenia at the moment, Sinanyan responded that there are direct applicants, but there are more indirect applicants, whose final “picture” will be clear after his visit to Beirut.
And to the question how the residency issues of the Armenians who came to Armenia from Lebanon will be resolved, Sinanyan said: "No Armenian coming to Armenia shall be left without a place to live; so, we are working in that direction."
