We couldn’t be in favor of the decision to deprive Russia of voting rights: H. Naghdalyan
Yesterday at the PACE winter session a decision was made that the decision of depriving Russian delegation of the voting right is valid till the spring session. The decision of depriving Russia of the voting right was made still in 2014 after annexation of Crimea. Hermine Naghdalyan, Mher Shahgeldyan and Naira Karapetyan from our delegation were present at the session. On the position of our delegation we spoke to the head of the delegation, the NA vice-President Hermine Naghdalyan, who said: “This voting decided whether Russian delegation would be deprived of the voting right or not. We couldn’t be in favor of such decision, as Russia is our strategic ally and partner and as we think that the PACE must be the platform, where all can speak and raise their positions, can try to find opportunities for rapprochement and understanding through discussions, so our voting is reasoned. There were many amendments regarding the report of Austrian MP Shennah and there were such amendments, which substantially aggravated the situation and we were against them. Before the session, the report was discussed at the monitoring committee and there also our positions were in favor of our Russian partners. But I also must remind the result of the voting- 160 European delegates voted in favor of the termination of powers of the Russian delegation, which was the majority, and in fact 42 opposed and 11 abstained delegates didn’t agree with such decision including us. As you see our delegation is small and our 3-4 votes didn’t change the result.”
