According to the RoA Presidential Press Service, during his meeting with community leaders on October 4 in Los Angeles, President Serzh Sargsyan went into a detailed description of the current stage of negotiations regarding the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations and the protocols soon to be signed by the leaders of both nations. President Sargsyan stated that negotiations with Turkey had been underway since Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union and that such processes were only publicized recently. He claimed that the current protocols offered Armenia the opportunity to conduct normal negotiations with Turkey and to have normal relations with Ankara. He said he was convinced that Armenia would not suffer as a result but that it would reap certain benefits from relations with Turkey. After the meeting, the AGBU hosted a dinner in honour of President Sargsyan attended by some 500 representatives of Armenian organization from the western United States and varios Latin American nations. In his address, President Sargsyan said that the meeting had been productive and that a frank and open discussion of a number of topics had taken place. The president noted that the reason why there are so many hyphenated Armenian communities in the world today was Turkey. He said the losses and grief suffered were irreplaceable and inconsolable but that our voices and spirit were unbroken. But he noted that we, as a people, had little faith in our own resources and strengths. "In this beautiful hall and across the world, what ties us together are our Armenian dreams and the fate of Armenia, which is directly linked to the fate of the diapora. All our thoughts, emotions, heated debates, anger and thoughtful discussions, all have one objective – to see a future Armenia that is strong, more developed and beautiful and to see an Armenian people more unified and organized than ever before. What ties us together aren’t only our roots but our national aspirations for the future," President Sargsyan stated. "The Armenia of the future will be the one that we dream and start to put into practice today; just like Alexander Tamanyan dreamt and built for Yerevan, the capital of the Armenian nation. Successive generations actually resided in the city of Tamanyan. The years necessitated certain modifications but I assure you all that we lived in that city. A similar situation faces us today. Our country of tomorrow will be based on the mental prowess we implement today in imagining what type of nation we wish to see realized. To accomplish this we need the same faith as displayed by Tamanyan. I am also here with you today to reaffirm our faith in our own resources and capabilities and in the future to come," noted President Sargsyan in his address.