Armenia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian was among a select group of foreign ministers who addressed the UN 28th Special Session, on the 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps. The session was held just a few days before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, by Soviet troops, near the end of World War II.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan spoke about the role of the UN, which was founded immediately following the Second World War. The massive violations of human rights during the war was an impetus for the formation of this international institution, 60 years ago, he explained.

The Secretary General was followed by Holocaust Survivor, writer, Professor Elie Wiesel, and former UN Undersecretary Sir Brian Urquhart. Elie Wiesel evoked images of the horrors that concentration camp inmates had to endure, and repeatedly expressed amazement at humanity's capacity for such evil, and for such indifference. Sir Brian, then a member of the Allied Forces that liberated the camps, stressed humanity's collective responsibility in the prevention of genocides and in bringing to justice the perpetrators.

They were followed by Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister of Israel, the Special Representative of Poland, Mr. Bronislaw Geremek, Vladimir Lukin, the commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation, Paul Wolfowitz, US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Jean Asselborn, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg, on behalf of the European Union, and Marcello Pera, Speaker of the Italian Senate.

Together with Minister Oskanian, also on the rostrum were other foreign
ministers: Joschka Fischer, Germany, Michel Barnier, France, Pierre Pettigrew, Canada, Ilinka Mitreva, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as representatives of Greece, Romania, Norway, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and Great Britain.

The full text of the Minister's speech