ARMENIAN CHURCH COMPLAINS OF NO MOVEMENT ON ITS

C O N F I D E N T I A L YEREVAN 000083 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/05/2019 TAGS: PREL PGOV SCUL KIRF GG AM SUBJECT: ARMENIAN CHURCH COMPLAINS OF NO MOVEMENT ON ITS CHURCHES IN GEORGIA REF: 08 YEREVAN 1003 Classified By: DCM J. Pennington for reasons 1.4 (b,d) ¶1. (C) Poloff met with Armenian Apostolic Bishop Arshak Khachatrian, Chancellor of the Mother See of Holy Ejmiatsin, on February 3, to follow up on the Armenian view of the conflict over the Norashen Church in Tbilisi and to find out if the Armenian Church had received any notification from its Georgian counterpart regarding the planned historical commission to determine the building's ownership (reftel). Khachatrian said he had still not received any message from the Georgian Church, and speculated that the commission idea was a ruse to delay the resolution of what the Armenian Church considers an intolerable situation. ¶2. (C) Khachatrian again stressed that the Armenian Church wants to be recognized as a legitimate church in Georgia, and wants the six churches in dispute to be returned to the Armenian Church so its 400,000 adherents in Georgia can freely worship there. In response to the Georgian church's recent claim that Armenia has confiscated some of its churches in Armenia--what he characterized as "preposterous"--Khachatrian argued that the churches in Kobayr and Akhtala (both in northern Armenia) have not been under the Georgian diocese since the Georgian church adopted Orthodoxy in the 7th century. If the Georgians were to persist in making such claims, he said tongue-in-cheek, the Armenian Church will claim the churches in Georgia's holy city of Mtskheta, as they were built by Armenians. All kidding aside, Khachatrian bemoaned the current state of Georgian-Armenian Church relations, stating that "even under Soviet dominance, we were always sister churches until Georgian independence. Maybe the fall of the Soviet Union was not all good." ¶3. (C) COMMENT: Caucasus history is sufficiently murky and inter-woven as to create many opportunities for self-serving historical interpretation, with strong elements of truth on both sides. Most frustrating to us is the "he said, she said" quality of disagreement even about which side is refusing to engage substantively with the other. Our colleagues in Tbilisi report that Georgian church officials are awaiting a respond from the Armenian side, while here in Yerevan we hear from the Armenian Church that it's the Georgians who refuse to engage. We suspect that the truth is that neither party much believes in the other side's good faith nor particularly wants to engage in hard negotiations to work out their differences. Instead, they are fighting a public relations battle for U.S. support for their respective claims. END COMMENT. YOVANOVITCH