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 Ashtarak-Gyumri 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 Armenia-Diaspora 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. Twenty-two years ago on February 27-28, 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 self-determination 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 presidential-driven 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.