By Shoghik Galstian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on March 12 acknowledged that he forced the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI) to resign because of what she told and gave US President JD Vance during his recent visit to Yerevan.
The director, Edita Gzoyan, gifted Vance a book about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict after he and his wife Usha laid flowers on February 10 at a memorial to the victims of the 1915 genocide, which is part of the AGMI. Gzoyan also escorted them to other parts of the complex, including cross-stones placed in memory of Armenians killed in 1988-1990 pogroms in Azerbaijan. According to an AGMI press release, she emphasized “the connection between those events and the Armenian Genocide” in Ottoman Turkey.
Gzoyan tendered her resignation earlier this month. Pashinyan confirmed that she did so “on my instructions.”
“Yes, I considered [the gift to Vance] an action contrary to the foreign policy pursued by the government, I considered it a provocative action and asked her to write a resignation letter,” he told journalists.
“When the country’s prime minister says there is no Karabakh movement, what does it mean to present a book on the Artsakh issue to a foreign guest? … Foreign policy in Armenia is conducted by the government of Armenia, and any Armenian government official who says anything that contradicts the government’s foreign policy should be fired,” said Pashinyan.
