On January 25, the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will kick off. The agenda includes two anti-Armenian reports: “Rise in violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories of Azerbaijani” and “Deliberate deprivation of water of the residents of Azerbaijan’s border regions”. One of them is about Nagorno-Karabakh and the other about Sarsang reservoir. Members of the Armenian delegation to PACE are currently meeting with various PACE delegations in different countries to obtain agreements either to vote “No” to this anti-Armenian reports or “in favor of” to the recommendations made by the Armenian side. However, a member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, leader of the PAP party, Naira Zohrabyan, said that although they are doing their job, nevertheless, they are not optimistic that they will manage to suspend or remove these initiatives from the agenda.
In an interview with Aravot.am, a Board member of the Armenian National Congress party, Chairman of the ANC Foreign Relations Committee, Vladimir Karapetyan, informed that for example the member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, also the Head of the ANC faction, Levon Zurabyan, has already initiated meetings with the delegations of the PACE and ALDE Group. The emphasis is going to be either to vote “against” to these reports or “in favor of” our recommendations. Vladimir Karapetyan stated that the majority of the RACE delegates are from the EPP, and RPA and PAP are the members of it. Therefore, according to Mr. Karapetyan, Serzh Sargsyan had a lot to do here, “Serzh Sargsyan attends the EPP summits 4 times a year. No head of any country attends with such activeness. Let him go and solve the issue there and as a result, the delegates will receive assignments, that’s all, these reports will not pass.”
To our question of why it is not done, Mr. Karapetyan responded as follows: “The reason is that Serzh Sargsyan is not capable. Why are people getting poor and leaving Armenia, the oligarchy is flourishing, 95 percent of the mass media is pro-government? These are in the same context. Serzh Sargsyan is not capable of doing anything and when he travels to different countries, he speaks Armenian for the Armenian audience, he does not speak European language about European problems. He is doing his PR. He is not called to bipartite meetings, he is not able to carry out normal visit, for example, he travels to Italy and the Prime Minister does not accept him. At the EPP summits, Serzh Sargsyan does not actually represent the interests of our country rather than pursues his own interests, in the event when the representatives of this party are the decision makers in the PACE.”
Vladimir Karapetyan noted that if Serzh Sargsyan were concerned about these matters, then he would have expressed his concern at least once that Armenia is vacating, or would not appoint a person with an intellect of Hovik Abrahamyan a prime minister. To our observation that in fact irrespective of what efforts the Armenian delegation to PACE makes in this situation, anyway, we cannot have serious expectations, Mr. Karapetyan responded, “I repeat, the majority of the PACE delegates are representatives of the EPP. The leader of the Republican Party attended four summits last years and delivered his speech. And these summits are attended with large delegations. If there are a will and ability, then all the chances should be used, appropriate work should be conducted with the delegates so that people would go and vote as their party members are asking, as Levon Zurabyan did during the summer session in the case of the ALDE Group. But ALDE, unlike EPP, is a small group. Hence, now, it depends on the voting at the January session whether Serzh Sargsyan is taken seriously or not, whether their urges are heard or not, whether they have proper prestige to be able to solve an issue or they are just attending the party session on the state money and deliver speeches on our political matters.”
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According to Vladimir Karapetyan, it is too late to talks about leaving or removing the reports from the agenda as we should have thought about it long ago, for instance, in one of the EPP summits, Serge Sargsyan should have made a statement that we would fight together against such issues that hamper the process going towards the peaceful settlement of the NKR conflict.
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
