As in many of the conflicts in the South Caucasus, there are competing stories or narratives of civilization, of origin and so on, but really the modern origins of the conflict go back to the early days of the Soviet Union when an Armenian enclave was made part of Azerbaijan. I know many people would disagree with that assessment, but in crude terms that's largely accurate. Then fast-forward to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the declaration of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, frankly under the tutelage of Armenia and essentially incorporated into the state of Armenia in many important respects.
I alluded to this in my remarks, but one of the things I find extraordinary about this whole situation is that in the views of the Armenian diaspora in Canada, Turkey's and Azerbaijan's actions have constituted continuing acts of genocide. Leaving aside the relative merits of that argument, this is nonetheless a situation we should have been approaching with extraordinary care and attention, and I don't have the sense that those were there. I don't have the sense from the heavily redacted documents. I don't have the sense from the department's report that this was something that should have been approached with greater attention than it was.