A special meeting

In one of my previous logs I mentioned Hein Tolboom, a Dutch guy currently working for a human rights NGO in Nagorno-Karabagh, and his weblog. Right now, this post is the last one on the page. Anyway, Hein wrote in his weblog about a seminar he recently attended in Tsaghkadzor organized by the Helsinki Citizen's Assembly office in Yerevan. This seminar was special, because apart from four Dutch people, two Georgians and about 15 Armenians, 4 young people from Azerbaijan also attended it.

Apparently the participants engaged in heated debates about their countries and the conflict surrounding Kharabagh, with one Armenian guy even looking back as far as ancient Roman and Greek writers for support! These discussions made it clear to 'outsider' Hein that both countries and peoples have hugely different views on the region's history. Hein writes, that for the majority of the Armenian participants, this was the first time ever they met an Azeri in person. Hein quotes one of the Armenian participants as saying: "I never expected to be able to sit and talk so peacefully and without aggression during my first meeting with an Azeri. I will keep very good memories [of this event] and I exchanged email-addresses with (...) Azeris. I am looking forward to toasting with Armenian cognac together with our Azerbaijani friends in Baku."

Hein notes how the participants from Azerbaijan were constantly followed by two men from the Armenian secret security. They had only limited freedom of movement and had to always ask permission before going somewhere. Officially, all these measures were necessary to secure the Azeris' own security, but basically it was done mostly to secure the Armenians' security.