In February 2002, Louise Manoogian Simone decided to take a step back and leave the presidency of the AGBU to someone else. The lawyer Berge Setrakian, Secretary General of the Central Board for better than twenty years and vice president, was elected the seventh president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union on 22 May 2002. The succession was a smooth one. As in any other human enterprise, it necessitated a reassessment of the AGBU’s mission and the priorities the organization now intended to set.
In recent decades, the Union has striven both to grasp and keep pace with the profound transformations that are now shaping the Armenian world. These include Armenia’s independence; the declining role of Armenian communities in the Middle East; the shift of the diaspora’s centers of energy to a few Western countries; the revival of the Armenian communities of the former Soviet bloc; and the emergence of a large, important diaspora in the Russian Federation.
The Challenge Before President Berge Setrakian
A conversation between Catholicos Karekin II and AGBU president Berge Setrakian during the AGBU's October 2004 General Assembly in Yerevan (AGBU arch./Yerevan).
The AGBU's Octobre 2004 General Assembly is opened in the presence of Catholicos Karekin II, the Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vartan Oskanian, and the president of the AGBU, Berge Setrakian (AGBU arch./ Yerevan).
Delegates to the AGBU General Assembly visiting Echmiadzin in October 2004 (AGBU arch./Yerevan).
Participants in the AGBU General Assembly visiting Echmiadzin in October 2004 (AGBU arch./Yerevan).
A working meeting between members of the AGBU's Central Board and Armenia's president Robert Kotcharian and his team during the AGBU's October 2004 General Assembly
(AGBU arch./ Yerevan).