ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 24, 2005 Sunday
Armenia ready to normalize relations with Turkey-president
By Tigran Liloyan
YEREVAN
Armenia is ready even now to establish normal relations with Turkey,
said republican President Robert Kocharyan in his address on the
occasion of the 90th anniversary of the 1915 genocide of Armenians in
the Ottoman Empire.
“A crime had been committed, and it had no analogues in the history
of Armenian people and mankind and even had no name,” says the
address, circulated by the presidential press service. “We lost
million-strong victims as well as a huge waste of cultural, spiritual
and material heritage,” the Armenian president emphasized.
“The year 1915 became a water-divide in destinies of all parts of the
Armenian people. It drastically changed and distorted the normal way
of their development,” Kocharyan noted. The heavy consequences of the
genocide are felt up to this time in the life of both people of
Armenia and the Armenian diaspora, he added.
In the president’s opinion, the international recognition and
condemnation of Armenians’ genocide is “a problem which concerns not
only Armenia: it should be regarded now in the context of regional
and international policies”. Turkey’s negative stand on recognition
of the genocide “provokes puzzlement not only among us, but among the
international community as well,” the president stated.
Thousands of people are streaming on Sunday to the memorial in
Yerevan on the Tsitsernakaberd Hill, piled up in memory of genocide
victims. Representatives of political parties, the general public and
the diaspora lay flowers at the Eternal Flames.
The head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II,
performed an office for the dead at the Eternal Flames. In the
evening, the Supreme Patriarch will conduct an ecumenical ceremony of
memory at Yerevan’s St. George the Illuminator Cathedral. It will be
attended by representatives of the Russian Orthodox, Assyrian
Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox,
Anglican churches and the European Conference of Churches.
Delegations of dozens of countries stay in Yerevan. Russia is
represented by vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma lower house
Georgy Boos.
A statement by president of the World Armenian Congress Ara Abramyan
calls for a sober political appraisal of the situation on
international recognition of Turkey’s responsibility for the genocide
of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, taking into account present-day
realities.
“The genocide of Armenians continues to be a pressing political as
well as international and legal problem. That is why it reached again
the level of world politics,” the statement says. “This date prompts
us to make a sober political appraisal of the situation on
international recognition of Turkey’s responsibility, taking into
account realities of the present-day world.”
In Abramyan’s opinion, recognition of this responsibility should take
place “on the grounds of international law and with assistance from
peaceful means (established in international law) for settling such
disputes”.
The congress president claimed that “we can and must speak now of
political responsibility of the Turkish state under the international
law for the crime committed by it”.