Howard Dean with ARF-Dashnaksutiun Bureau Member Vicken Hovsepian, Tsitsernakaberd, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia

Emil Danielyan, who told me about Dean’s arrival in Armenia today, writes for RFE/RL that the former U.S. Democratic presidential nominee had expressed an interest in visiting Armenia as part of a tour of Eastern Europe as well as Georgia. Nevertheless, the visit was arranged by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation - Dashnaksutyun, apparently through its U.S. based lobbying group, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

Official Armenian sources said his talks with President Robert Kocharian, parliament speaker Artur Baghdasarian and Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian focused on the current state of U.S.-Armenian relations, the situation in the South Caucasus and international efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenia’s strained relations with Turkey, a key U.S. ally, were also on the agenda, they said.

Kocharian was quoted by his press service as welcoming the “dynamic” development of U.S.-Armenian ties and commending the United States for its “weighty contribution” to economic reforms implemented in Armenia. Baghdasarian, for his part, hailed Washington’s “great mission to strengthen democracy around the world,” according to a statement by the speaker’s office.

[…]

Dean was also reported to note the Democratic Party’s “strong ties” with the influential Armenian-American community, saying that it will continue to support pro-Armenian resolutions in Congress.

Dean’s first-ever visit to Yerevan was organized by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), an influential party that controls one of the two main Armenian lobbying groups on Capitol Hill: the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). ANCA and other Dashnaktsutyun structures in the U.S. supported the former Vermont governor’s presidential bid in the Democratic primaries. They as well as many other Armenian-American groups later endorsed John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic challenger.

Dashnaktsutyun representatives said that although they arranged the high-level meetings, Dean himself had expressed a desire to visit Armenia as well as Georgia as part of his ongoing tour of Eastern Europe.

You can read the full article here.

UPDATE: Saturday 20 August — have just come back from Tsitsernakaberd and Dean was surrounded only by prominent members of the ARF-D party and ANCA. It may be that this trip is part of an Eastern European tour but the Yerevan leg was very much a Dashnak event. Apparently, they’re even throwing a party in his honor tonight.

BTW: Vicken Hovsepian (in the photograph above) has an interesting history. In 1982, when still a Lebanese citizen, he was sentenced for plotting to blow up the Turkish Consulate in Philadelphia. The FBI linked Hovsepian with his co-conspirator, Viken Yacoubian, to the Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide who were responsible for the assassination of 21 Turkish diplomats including the 1982 murder of the Turkish Consul in Los Angeles.

In 1999, the two were granted U.S. citizenship by the same judge who originally sentenced them because they “have lived exemplary lives and have become pillars of their communities since their release from prison.”