Uruguay Parliament Speaker First High-Level official to Visit Karabagh

STEPANAKERT, NKR—On Nov. 12, Jorge Orrico, the speaker of the Uruguayan Parliament, traveled to the Nagorno Karabagh Republic (NKR; or Artsakh, to Armenians) to meet with President Bako Sahakian and other officials, reported the Armenpress news agency.

Orrico, the first high-level foreign official (outside of the OSCE Minsk Group) to visit Artsakh, was greeted in Stepanakert by a large crowd of residents.

During a meeting with Sahakian and his staff, Orrico reportedly discussed the development of bi-lateral relations between Karabagh and Uruguay. Sahakian emphasized that both are friendly nations that possess many shared characteristics, including history and government philosophy.

Sahakian praised Uruguay’s role in promoting international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, as well as its balanced approach to the recognition of Karabagh and the conflict resolution process.

The two leaders emphasized the imperative for strengthening relations and the need for concrete steps to achieve this goal.

Participating in the meeting were NKR Parliamentary Speaker Shot Ghoulian; Armenia’s ambassador to Uruguay, Vahagn Melikyan; Armenian National Assembly members, including Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) bloc member Vahan Hovannesian; and representatives of the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Uruguay.

Orrico is on an official visit to Armenia at the invitation of Parliamentary Speaker Hovik Abrahamyan. He visited the Dzidzernagapert Genocide Memorial and held meetings with officials. Uruguay was the first country to recognize the Armenian Genocide in 1965.

In September 2011, in an unprecedented announcement, the foreign minister of Uruguay, Luis Almagro, said, “Today we are looking into the [Karabagh] issue in order to present an official government position on the matter. I am personally convinced that Nagorno-Karabagh is part of historic Armenia and it must be independent and in a short while be unified with Armenia. This is the only resolution to the Artsakh issue.”

Almagro was speaking at a conference in Uruguay’s capital, organized by the ANC of South America and the Uruguay-Armenia parliamentary group marking the 20th anniversary of Armenia’s independence and highlighting Uruguay-Armenia relations.

Hovannesian, who was in Montevideo at the time of Almagro’s announcement, welcomed the statement, calling it unprecedented. “For the first time, a progressive and democratic country such as Uruguay is officially expressing a position, which reflects the posturing of the ruling political forces,” Hovannesian said in 2011.

“I’m honored to represent the country, which was the first to recognize the Armenian Genocide,” Orrico said on Nov. 12, speaking at a session of the Armenian National Assembly.

Armenia and Uruguay have a number of similarities, he said; both are small states surrounded by large countries. “We are the grandsons of those Uruguayans who opened their hearts in 1915 to accept the persecuted peoples. We are honored to be the first to accept the Armenian Genocide by law. It happened on April 22, 1965. I would like to note that we have an Armenian Genocide museum in our country and every year on April 24 we hold commemorative events at the Chamber of Representatives. We are a piece of Armenia in South America,” said Orrico.

“We are an open country and are trying to become the most democratic in our region. If there were just a few countries Uruguay was cooperating with several decades ago, today it has economic relations with over 120 countries of the world, and is proud of the steady economic growth for 9 years in a row and an attractive investment climate,” he explained.