Hungary, Armenia agree to restore diplomatic relations after the axe murderer scandal

Hungary and Armenia have agreed on re-establishing diplomatic relations, Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, said on Facebook on Thursday.

The minister held talks with his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan on the sidelines of a Council of Ministers session of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Lodz, Poland. Szijjártó noted that diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken off over ten years ago.

“After several rounds of preparatory talks and mutual gestures, I have agreed with my Armenian colleague on restoring diplomatic relations. This is fitting in the case of two Christian countries,” he wrote. The minister called Hungary’s ethnic Armenian community an important link between the two countries, adding that the government had considerably increased support for that community. Restoring diplomatic relations will open up possibilities for commercial, cultural, educational and touristic cooperation, Szijjártó said.

In 2004, Azerbaijani Lieutenant Ramil Safarov was “jailed for life after hacking Armenian officer Gurgen Margarian to death in 2004 at a military academy in Budapest, where the servicemen were attending English-language courses organised by NATO”, Al Jazeera wrote in 2012. However, the Hungarian government agreed to extradite Safarov to Azerbaijan where he was pardoned shortly after his return and regarded as a national hero. That is the scandal that broke the Hungarian-Armenian diplomatic ties.

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