MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
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PRESS AND INFORMATION DEPARTMENT
Telephone: +37410. 544041 ext. 202
Fax: +37410. 565601
Email: [email protected]
PRESS RELEASE
10-12-2007
Armenia’s Foreign Minister Received the Civilitas 2007 award from the Dama
Castellana organization
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.
H. E. Mr. Vartan Oskanian
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Conegliano, Italy
December 9, 2007
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.