Armenia's Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian to Speak
at
Fletcher School Sept. 18
A Graduate of both Tufts and Fletcher
Somerville/Medford, Mass. Fresh from addressing the United
Nations General Assembly on Sunday, Vartan Oskanian, the foreign
minister of Armenia, will travel to Boston where he will deliver
a speech called "The Effect of Great Power Politics on the
Caucasus" at The Fletcher School at Tufts University on
Wednesday, Sept. 18, beginning at 7 p.m.
No stranger to Boston, Oskanian graduated from Tufts University,
where he received his MS in Structural Engineering. He later
received a Masters' degrees from The Fletcher School and
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He has a son who is
currently a freshman at Tufts.
Joyce Barsam, a Tufts trustee who is active in Armenian-American
activities, was instrumental in arranging the foreign minister's
visit to the university.
In his speech, Oskanian is expected to touch on the difficult
political and economic problems facing Armenia, a fledging
democracy which declared its independence from the Soviet Union
in 1991. Several years ago, Armenia was rocked by the
assassination of its prime minister. Armenia and Azerbaijan are
locked in a bitter dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of
Azerbaijan populated mostly by Armenians seeking independence.
Azerbaijan, which has ties to big US oil companies, continues to
pressure the Bush Administration to relax its blacklist of
Azerbaijan – a move strongly opposed by many Armenian-Americans
and human rights activists.
Meanwhile, Armenia continues to walk a tightrope in its foreign
policy of "complementarity" in which it neither favors the United
States or Russia. Currently, Russian and Armenian. troops patrol
Armenia's border with Turkey, while Armenia continues to look to
the United States for economic and military assistance.
The Fletcher appearance is sponsored by The Fletcher School's
program in Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization.
WHEN: Wed., Sept. 18, 2002 at 7 p.m. [Reception to follow
in the Hall of Flags.]
WHERE: Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
160 Packard Ave., ASEAN Auditorium
Medford, Mass. [near the tennis courts]
|
|
