As my senior friend and Blogian reader Ara S. Ashjian informs from Baghdad (Iraq), “The Iraqi government decided to reconstruct the Armenian Orthodox church in the northern city of Mosul, which was targeted by a terrorist act in 2004.”

It is worth to note that before the Iraqi war Armenian churches of Iraq faced no vandalism or destruction. Ironically, Iraq becomes the second conservative Muslim country after Iran to reconstruct Armenian churches. In contrast, Armenian monuments in Turkey and especially in Azerbaijan are deliberately being destroyed or cleansed from their Armenian identity.

Mr. Ashjian continues:

The decision came after the Primate of the Iraqi Armenian Diocese H.E. Archbishop Avak Asadourian had met with the Iraqi president Jalal Al-Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Ja’fari and appealed to them to reconstruct the Church.
On Jan. 16, 2006, Iraqi Prime Minister’s office requested in a note addressed to the Financial and Reconstruction Ministers’ offices the allocation of the amount of money required and commencement of the reconstruction of the Church.
For the same reason, H.E. Archbishop Avak Asadourian has also met with the Iraqi Minister of Reconstruction Jasim Mohammed Ja’far. During the meeting, Ja’far said that his Ministry has estimated the costs and will begin the work after getting the approval of the Prime Minister, as the Iraqi Al-Sabah daily newspaper reported on Feb. 4, 2006.