Two anti-Armenian resolutions will be debated by PACE in January
The Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is seriously preparing for the PACE winter session to be held in Strasbourg from January 25 to 29. On January 26, the Assembly will hear two anti-Armenian reports. “PACE is such a platform where blows and counterblows are of permanent nature,” says Hermine Naghdalyan, Vice-Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly. Naira Zohrabyan, Head of the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) parliamentary group, says it is important that the Armenian delegation members work with those PACE delegates ‘who have not been bribed yet.’ The reports included in the agenda of the January 26 sitting are entitled "Escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan" and on "Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water". The first report, drafted by Robert Walter (United Kingdom, EC), calls for “the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces and other irregular armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan, and the establishment of full sovereignty of Azerbaijan in these territories.” The second report is prepared by Milica Markovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina, SOC). It says the lack of regular maintenance work for over 20 years on the Sarsang reservoir, located in one of the areas of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia, “poses a danger to the whole border region”. Hermine Naghdalyan says the Azerbaijani delegation particularly activated in the last year after sanctions were imposed on Russia after it annexed Crimea. “In this period, Azerbaijanis tried to draft a number of anti-Armenian documents and reports,” she said. Hermine Naghdalyan says that PACE adopts anti-Armenian resolutions and reports every ten years. In 2005, the structure passed 14.16 anti-Armenian resolution. “We do not welcome the fact that PACE has lowered its bar and adopts worthless ‘piles of papers’ as Aliyev likes to call them. Of course, some of these papers are of political importance, and when their dossier is enriched they harden Azerbaijan's position in the negotiating process.” Do our diplomats support the Armenian delegation? Naira Zohrabyan says, “Parliamentary activities have one delicacy: when our ambassadors meet with the delegates of the country where they serve, the gesture is not well accepted. They view it as pressure on them by their government. It is much more effective when our delegates speak and work with them.” The Armenian delegates promise to do their utmost to make PACE delegates vote against the anti-Armenian resolutions at the January 26 sitting.
