A conference titled "Genocide: yesterday and today; the lessons we derived entering the 21st century" initiated by permanent representatives of Armenia and Rwanda in the UN with the assistance of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) was held in the UN last week. "The conference should be viewed as a regular discussion of genocide. The UN provided a conference hall only though UN Secretary General's assistant for political affairs took part in it," Vahagn Dadryan, the Director of the Center of Genocide Studies at the Zoryan Institute stated in an interview with RFE/RL. When commenting on the purpose of conferences of the kind, Dadryan noted, "The purpose of such conferences is to study the first and last genocide of the 20th century in order to derive lessons and prevent genocides in future."