The Armenia-Diaspora conference of September 1999 decides to extend the activities of the Armenia Diaspora Conference Government Organizing Committee, formed by President Robert Kocharian's decree of December 24, 1998, and mandates it to temporarily coordinate Armenia-Diaspora relations and within one month create six mixed Armenia-Diaspora working groups around the following topics:

1- Political activism--Lobbying
2- Economic issues
3- Cultural, scientific, educational
4- Information
5- Humanitarian
6- A group that will study the appropriateness and possibility of creating a coordinating body to implement the emerging Armenia-Diaspora joint activities agenda.

Today, at the threshold of a new millennium, representatives of all Armenians are gathered in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, to examine the critical challenges and opportunities facing our dispersed nation, and articulate our national priorities in the context of new historic realities.

This truly is an unprecedented historic event, which by focusing Armenia-Diaspora relations, is initiating the kind of process which will henceforth ensure a qualitatively new level of concerted collaboration of all the elements of the Armenian people, to jointly examine and together resolve national issues.

Armenians cannot ignore the imperatives of time. And in confronting those challenges, we will identify those basic priorities, issues and convictions, which we all share, wherever we happen to be. Our people's strength emerges from the diverse experiences of all its elements and is united in purpose.

We have a common history, a common destiny and common goals, and we must better combine our resources, act in greater solidarity, take into consideration the istinctiveness of each community and make it possible to coordinate our activities and future initiatives.

The beginning of the 20th century was a black page in our history, with the genocide perpetrated against our people by the Ottoman Empire. The beginning of the century also saw victory with the heroic battles of 1918 and the establishment of the First Armenian Republic. Having overcome the consequences of the Genocide and the various obstacles which rose before our nation, the pinnacle of the end of the century was the establishment of today's independent and sovereign Armenian Republic. The safekeeping and strengthening of our state is an even more immediate, fundamental, long-range and decisive concern.

The Armenian Republic's irreversible progress and prosperity benefits us all since Armenia is the homeland of all Armenians. Each Armenian is obligated to demonstrate total support in order for Armenia to be strong, vital and prosperous, and thus a guarantee of the nation's secure survival and the promotion of our national interests.

Armenia is in a complex geopolitical environment where it must transform our nation's human and material potential into strength and form a strong economy and society. Its response to a quickly changing world must include the participation of all its social layers. Armenians wherever they may be in the world accept the general responsibility to join in the war to secure Armenia's economic and spiritual prosperity.

Our other significant accomplishment at the threshold of the new millennium was freeing Artsakh from the foreigner's yoke. The Armenians of Artsakh unswervingly defended their forefathers' land and achieved the right to live free. The security and financial comfort of each Armenian of Artsakh is the most important concern and objective of all Armenians. The Republic of Armenia will continue to support Artsakh to live free and secure. And the Armenian Diaspora shares in this responsibility and it will continue to make every effort to secure Artsakh's freedom and economic strengthening.

After Armenia's independence new issues are confront the Diaspora. Still, our common goals continue to be the same. Among them, the central one is securing safe living conditions and opportunities for the development of culture and identity in all communities around the world. The Republic of Armenia is completely prepared to take on its portion of responsibility to ensure the realization of these objectives for the Diaspora. And it will utilize all its institutions to maximally demonstrate the necessary support for the Diaspora's undisturbed progress.

All the components of our national entity-the Republic of Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora-are interdependent. Our activities are linked as is our history-- our past and our future. Therefore, we will adopt a model of cooperation-a system that is based on the principles and standards which unite us-and thus turn that interdependence into an asset and a source of strength.

We unreservedly affirm that human life is inviolable, integrity is the highest value, and we recognize an individual's civil, political and economic rights.

We are convinced that democratic principles and man's natural rights and freedoms are of primary significance for the functioning of state and community institutions.

We believe that the rule of law is a necessary precondition for securing equal opportunities, for the objective execution of justice and to prevent administrative arbitrariness.

For us, peace, friendship among nations, cooperation, respect for man's and nations' right to free development, freedom of conscience and religion are fundamental values.

Henceforth, we accept responsibility to transform our national, state and local institutions so that they will be transparent, secure equality and the full expression of their members' potential. Institutions which are democratically organized and accountable to their members must strive to eradicate nepotism, corruption and divisive parochialism.

The Republic of Armenia and its state institutions must necessarily readdress their role in support of the Diaspora's needs and aspirations. Armenians are Armenian everywhere, and there is no difference as to where they are. They cannot be "odars" in their homeland, and the Republic undertakes to overcome the Constitutional exclusion of dual citizenship, and to allow each and every Armenian to establish a full presence in his or her homeland.

It is critical that our national agenda be pushed forward. It is a developing agenda and will include various initiatives in politics, science, culture, economics, finances, humanitarian aid and other spheres. In those spheres, activities will be conducted through individual, specific programs.

We reaffirm our determination to collectively pursue the historic rights of the Armenian people and the continuous defense of those rights. We are obligated to use our combined efforts to achieve unreserved recognition of the 1915 Genocide against Armenians by the international community.

The national liberation struggle of the people of Artsakh, which began in 1988, served as a great catalyst for the national renaissance of the Armenian people. Although, at the end of the 20th century, the Armenian people were again confronted with the specter of genocide, the consolidation of all of the nation's resources eliminated the threat of deportation and physical annihilation from yet another morsel of our historic homeland.

In response to the constitutional and peaceful demands of the Armenians of Artsakh for the just reestablishment of their historic rights, Azerbaijan, which has never had any legal claim to Nagorno Karabagh, resorted to ethnic cleansing and the deportation of the nearly half million Armenians of Azerbaijan and northern Artsakh. Later, by inciting war, it placed the entire Armenian population of Artsakh under threat of physical annihilation. Nevertheless, in its national liberation struggle, the people of Artsakh have never violated the general norms and principles of international law. 

The establishment of the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh, and the military victory of the Armenians of Artsakh became possible through the efforts of the entire Armenian nation.

We are grateful to other peoples and representatives of other countries, as well, for their just humanitarian policies and their defense of the struggle of the people of Artsakh to fight, in the name of freedom, for the right to live on their own land.

We declare that the attainment of the Artsakhis' legal right to determine their own future has a decisive significance for the future of all Armenians. The self-determination of the people of Artsakh, which assumes the recognition of the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh as a subject of international law, is in line with the emerging trends in international relations and as such creates the favorable preconditions in the Southern Caucasus region for the formulation of democratic institutions and economic integration.

Raising the Artsakh Armenians' standard of living and the creation of the full conditions necessary for them to satisfy their economic and spiritual needs on their land are the most important political objectives, and for that reason, the resolution of the social and economic problems of the Nagorno Karabagh Republic is of utmost importance. That also assumes that the necessary foundations are set for the return of refugees, by securing decent and appropriate living conditions.

In the heaviest days of the war, the idea of the defense and salvation of Artsakh served to unify Armenia and the Diaspora. Nearly all the segments of the Armenian dispersion, independent of their political and party ideologies, extended a helping hand to the Armenians of Artsakh. That fraternal support and cooperation which continues to this day, is the articulation of our people's capacity to resolve together the issues, which have risen before it.

Today, we reiterate that the fate of that small fragment of our historical homeland--the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh--is of critical significance for all Armenians and we reaffirm our readiness to aid in the just and comprehensive resolution of the Karabagh conflict, which assumes the self-determination of the people of Karabakh, based on the expression of their own free will.