 diaspora relations raffi hovannisian s address to policy forumarmenia it is an honor to be back at georgetown university a very important university in a very important capital city which has always played its pivotal role throughout the modern history of the republic of armenia and the armenian people and as a graduate of the georgetown university law center it is especially enjoyable for me to be back in these hallowed halls although i would rather not recall too precisely how long i have been gone but i must also confess that it is also rather humbling for me to be here today particularly as i look through this distinguished audience in fact i am reminded of the conversation between two cows in the armenian countryside grazing there on the ashtarakgyumri highway and they see a truck whiz by and on the truck it says it s a milk truck pasteurized homogenized and vitamin d added and one cow turns to the other and says it makes you feel a little bit inadequate doesn t it well that is close to capturing how i feel today being here among this group of scientists ambassadors and professors and especially among a young generation which holds out a lot of promise for armenia and its future the keynote address i think is nothing more than a summary for those who have been present throughout this forum from last night s presentation of the new report by the organizers and the two panels today we have a new generation of a policy analysis of a critical approach to armeniadiaspora relations and i think that the challenge as we look forward almost on the eve of the third decade of armenia s independence to creating a unified or coordinated vision or a blueprint for the future would nearly have the challenge of conveying into a policy process the hearts and minds and the policy prescriptions that are being discussed here at this forum armenia and the diaspora are indeed as different from each other as they are one we know in this transnational globalized third millennium that both conceptually and literally armenia and diaspora have shared identities armenia has become part diaspora diaspora part armenia and therefore the challenges and tribulations and prospects for the armenian nation are very much attached to the developing discourse within armenia within dispersion and between the various diasporas and the one republic of armenia very symbolically this policy forum takes place during a trinity of days that mean a lot to us in armenian history twentytwo years ago on february 2728 this past weekend the armenian community of sumgait in azerbaijan was attacked based on its identity for being armenian and basically the militarization of the mountainous karabagh conflict and the quest of artsakh for liberty and selfdetermination took on a new form as a nation that in history had survived a genocide and national dispossession faced once again the specter of pogroms and victimization and deadly and violent punishment merely on the basis of one s own identity today march 1 exactly two years ago in downtown yerevan we armenians underwent a very shameful presidentialdriven tragedy where we lost ten citizens faith and confidence in our nation and the values and standards that our parents and grandparents have passed on to us as traditional armenian staples we remember the fallen beyond armenia s frontiers and within armenia proper and in our own way we say never again never again because the quality of armenia s making it the quality of its future the ability of armenia to deliver on foreign policy objectives is directly conditional on the quality of life in armenia the depth of democracy and the application of the rule of law we remember and we must work never again to allow tragedy both within our frontiers and outside them where any and all armenian rights are at issue or under attack and march 2 tomorrow is the eighteenth anniversary of armenia s accession to the united nations armenia s sovereign return to the family of nations and i am very happy that ambassador shugarian mr papian and many other public servants are with us here today as well as my father professor richard hovannisian the dean of modern armenian history who was there at that time and someone who has been also extremely concerned that armenian history should not repeat  