Vartan Oskanian

Vartan Minasi Oskanian (Armenian Վարդան Մինասի Օսկանյան, English usually Vardan Oskanian, rare Vartan or Oskanyan, in scientific transliteration Vardan Oskanyan; born February 7, 1955 as Vartan Woskanjan ( Վարդան Ոսկանյան ) in Aleppo, Syria) is an Armenian politician and former Foreign Minister of Republic of Armenia.

Biography

His father's family came from the Anatolian city of Marash, she had survived the genocide of the Armenians. The mother of the family had earlier fled because of persecution by the Turks to Aleppo, where there is a large Armenian community. There he attended an Armenian school. In 1973 he emigrated to the Armenian SSR and studied civil engineering in Yerevan. In 1981 he emigrated to Boston (in the U.S.) and changed his name slightly in Oskanian, presumably because this is the pronunciation of his name in the Western Armenian dialect. In 1983, he earned a master's degree in engineering sciences in 1986 at Harvard University, a master's in political science and in 1991 the third master's degree in law and diplomacy.

His uncle is a major diamond wholesalers in Los Angeles. In his footsteps the nephew was supposed to occur. But immediately after the independence of the Republic of Armenia, he returned in 1992 in the capital, Yerevan back. In 1998, he put his U.S. citizenship and took on the Armenian, but left it in the revised version of his name ( the spelling of his name is very unusual, because even among Armenians, say that their dialect according Oskanian, the name Woskanjan is written - in Armenia, there are only a handful of families who write their names Oskanian ). In the same year Oskanian was foreign minister and was relatively uncontroversial in this office. He is regarded as an honest and competent politicians. However, he was not one of the most powerful politicians in the country, as, according to the Constitution, to the President, many foreign policy expertise. With the resignation Robert Kocharyan as president in 2008 also changed the composition of the external departments. Oskanjans successor was Edward Nalbandian.

Oskanian speaks Armenian, Arabic and English. He is married to American nationals Dr. Nani Oskanian, she is a pediatrician. The couple has two sons who are also U.S. citizens, and lives in Yerevan.