Naira Karapetyan addressing the developments in PACE winter session
Summarizing the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) which was kicked off on January 23 and ended today, Naira Karapetyan, an RPA faction MP, a member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, did not single out anything extraordinary in an interview with “Aravot”. Let us state that during this session, the Assembly passed a non-Armenophile provision containing the report by Head of the PACE Ukrainian delegation Volodymyr Ariev, Naira Karapetyan responded, “We saw one more non-constructive cooperation in the face Ariev, we became sure of his strong dependence on the opinion of the Azerbaijani delegation and Azerbaijani campaign. I have a lot of evidence to make this assertion. Unlike other cases, Ariev made many mistakes which were promptly raised by us at EPP session officially, and unofficially, were presented to all possible and available delegates.”
Naira Karapetyan stated that after Ariev’s report far from political considerations and absolutely not related to the conflict and prepared in the cultural and media committee, whose subject of the study was not even the territories of the conflict became the next platform for the use of highly dangerous political vocabulary. The Armenian delegate expressed concern that such an important issue as oppressions and persecution against journalists to tear off the context and make it a subject of political debate is at least a disrespected attitude towards the issue.
Note that Naira Karapetyan reminding the four-day war in April announced from the PACE tribune, “Opportunely, a big number of prestigious international media representatives had visited the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh to cover the events of this four-day war from the scene. Only on April 1-8, 68 journalists and 37 media and later about 100 journalists had joined them, including CNN, RAI, Al Jazeera, New York Times, Lifenews Medusa and so on. Many of you, I am sure, will remember the speech of NKR Foreign Minister on CNN live broadcast. Does this fact confirm that there is no freedom of expression in Karabakh? No, this confirms just the opposite.”
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Referring to Ariev’s post on the Facebook allegedly Armenians “were running with a cognac in their hands to give him a bribe”, Naira Karapetyan explained, “This did not stand any criticism and was sharply criticized by the EPP political group, and since Axel Fischer had initiated our negotiations with Ariev to arrive at a mutual agreement on the wording, Ariev said from the beginning that this wording which will be acceptable for Azerbaijani delegation will be acceptable for him. If one needs a bigger proof to be sure of his partiality, then this one is blind.” Naira Karapetyan urged that Ariev’s post on the Facebook was translated personally by him as he masters the Ukrainian language, and it is the reality rather than presented by Ariev which is translated wrongly.
According to the Armenian delegate, PACE delegates were disappointed that PACE has rejected to urgently organize a debate related to Turkey, “Many people were interested in it, many people are deeply concerned about the anti-democratic repression in Turkey, the decision of the Bureau and the snapshot of voting was highly unacceptable for many of us when once again we saw that the quantity very often wins the quality.” Regarding the discussions in the PACE committees, Naira Karapetyan informed, “Committee on Rules of Procedures actively discusses the directions to maintain the clear name of PACE and to establish independent investigation tools in connection with accusations of bribery.
There is a report in the Committee on Rules of Procedures which is proposed to changes to understand the next steps of such delegates as a result of being corrupted, and the fates of the report and the delegates who are accused of bribery. This implies to innocent people too, I do not doubt that there will be such people.”
To our question that the non-Armenophile wording have become more often in the PACE documents, our interlocutor replied, “PACE is the platform where it is the easiest to have such wording as the structure allows delegates of national parliaments to be independent and express their personal point of view, being even cut off from the policy of his country.”
According to Naira Karapetyan, it is only the PACE where Turks and Azeris can bribe someone, while in the negotiation process, they do not register success in the Minsk Group. To our reminder that their opponents, for example, expert of the Armenian Center for the Political and International Studies, Ruben Mehrabyan, speaking about the Armenian delegation said, “instead of talking about the Vienna agreements, which Azerbaijan fails to implement, they are determining the nationality of the grandmother of Ukrainian deputy”. Naira Karapetyan responded, “I assure all our opponents that our delegation understands that not everything should be voiced. Even if we have reminded about Vienna and St. Petersburg, it is not always to make it public and present the work that has been done and continues to be done by us.”
