Minister Vartan Oskanian addressed the UN High-Level Session onInterreligious and Intercultural Dialogue. Sponsored by the Phillipines and Pakistan, the session was dedicated to the need to promote dialog betweencultures and religions for the purpose of securing peace.

Armenia's Foreign Minister joined several dozen ministers and high-levelgovernment officials to address the session.

REMARKS BY
H.E. VARTAN OSKANIAN
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA
UN INTERFAITH AND INTERCULTURAL HIGH LEVEL DIALOGUE
NEW YORK
Oct 4. 2007

Dear Colleagues,

As an ancient people, serving as the perennial buffer between empires, on the most trampled path on earth, Armenians have become living witnesses ofthe benefit of dialogue between and within cultures. We have been engaged inthat international exchange for ages. Today, we in Armenia are among itsgreatest promoters, especially in our neighborhood.

Our geography has compelled us to seek bridges with peoples and culturesdifferent from our own. If we have an independent state today, it is becausewe succeeded in perpetuating our identity even as we interacted andexchanged with societies around us.

It is because of our experience that we feel compelled to continually searchfor non-traditional ways to approach the overarching issue of our time:living at peace in a pluralist world.

Not only have we lived in a pluralist neighborhood, we have, because ofgenocide and dispersion, had to set up homes and shops in nearly everycountry on earth.  This began when Armenian genocide survivors were welcomedand happily integrated into the fabric of the Arab Middle East. Religiousdifferences did not preclude inclusion. Our Diaspora, living as it didacross borders became both the means and the beneficiary of international
exchange and dialogue.

We are living witnesses then to the fact that religious and linguistic differences need not translate to enmity and exclusion. It is intolerance --from its simplest form to its most complex -- a rejection of individualshuman dignity, that causes ruptures in and between societies.

To build a peace atop pain and destruction, it is clear that solutions canonly be found through the genuine and universal acceptance and applicationof basic, fundamental individual and collective human rights.

Those rights include the right to determine one¹s destiny, to live free ofsecurity and oppression. The struggle of our brothers and sisters in NagornoKarabakh is exactly that ­ a struggle for the most basic human right, theright to live free. It is not a struggle against anyone's religion orculture. The effort to seek support against their struggle by relying onethnic and religious solidarity belies the universality of their claim ­that people everywhere ­ whether Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh,Palestinians, or the people of Darfur ­ all deserve to live freely and indignity.

As societies which had experienced pain and suffering at the hands of oppressors, we must teach and rely on the moral, ethical, social andpolitical benefits of tolerance and cooperation, and not feed the fears ofotherness and exclusion.

The frustrations, the resentments and the hostilities of victims of xenophobia and racism, should not be underestimated or dismissed.  TheSecurity implications of pent-up anger, of daily humiliations andhopelessness cannot be exaggerated. These must concern us all, for reasonsof principle as well as enlightened self-interest.

Our objective is a country and a world where the rights of individuals andgroups are respected, where each neighborhood and each community, each cityand country, each region and continent, are safe havens for all who live ortravel there. Religion is used to tear people apart, as are economicdisparities, language and ideology.  But the frustrating and fascinating contradiction is that it is faith and humanity that also bind people together.