As opposed to the representatives of the ruling party, the opposition Armenian National Congress is not excited about the visit of Herman van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, and his meeting with parliament members yesterday, in particular.
Herman van Rompuy didn’t answer in his verbose speech the questions of the ANC asked in advance. Let us remind that the ANC mentioned the events of March 1, 2008, in its questions, referred to the reports, assessments of those events and demands to solve the crime made by various European institutions and inquired whether the high-ranking European official was pleased with the current state of implementing those instructions by the Armenian government, when neither those who ordered nor those who actually committed that crime had been revealed. “There was no answer, I think that answers were not given also to the questions of other parliamentary groups,” Lyudmila Sargsyan, the leader of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP) and a member of the ANC parliamentary group, said during a conversation with www.aravot.am.
Our interlocutor assessed the meeting between the European official and our parliamentarians as a “standard” meeting, during which the President of the European Council praised the government of the Republic of Armenia, tried to present the parliamentary election held in May as a step forward and a progress. “The assessment made by the President of the European Council of the election, as Europe usually remarks, raises concerns. If they come back to praising, increase the money to be given to Armenia for developing democracy by €15 million after reports of the US Department of State and the PACE, another European institution, with negative assessments… if they expect such elections in return for that money, then it is a different issue,” Ms. Sargsyan says. In her assessment, the continuous and consistent visits to Armenia recently aim at reaching rapid settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and gaining unilateral concessions again, “In September-October, we may have reasons for concern. If they praise, they have found out something, if they give money, they have been promised something.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
