On October 12, the member of the RA NA Delegation to PACE Arusyak Julhakyan gave a speech at PACE Autumn Session. The MP noted in her speech:
“Dear Colleagues,
The Council of Europe is considered to be a beacon of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Its core mission is to uphold these values among its member states, and by doing so, it is supposed to contribute significantly to the prevention of conflicts. But can we state today that the Council of Europe is successful in this mission? The state of turmoil, the lack of peace, the wars themselves unleashed in the Council of Europe area prove the opposite. I think there is a crisis in the Council of Europe because we have forgotten the initial purpose of coming together.
So what should the Council of Europe do to prevent the conflicts? The answer is simple. The Council of Europe should promote, if necessary push democratization processes in its member states. Because it is a well-known fact that democratic states do not tend to initiate conflicts. If the member states refuse to comply with the democratic rules, the Council of Europe should sanction them, reconsider their membership.
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Colleagues, let me however reformulate the question. “What Council of Europe shouldn’t do to prevent conflicts?”
First, the CoE shouldn’t compromise with authoritarian regimes, with dictators. The dictators do not understand the language of compromise. The CoE should sanction the dictators in the timely manner, do not wait until it is too late.
Second, the CoE should not be neutral and balanced. The most common sentence I have heard in this Assembly is the following: “We must be neutral and balanced.”
No, dear colleagues, we must not. This is a political organization and we must have a clear political stance on any case of flagrant violation of our rules by the member states.
We have been neutral and balance for long with some of our member states until it was too late. We have been neutral and balanced with the case of Nagorno Karabakh, until it was and already is too late. And we cannot be neutral and balanced in the case with Armenia or other member country and one day in the future state that it is too late.
Speaking about Armenia: on October 5 a five sided meeting was planned in Granada between the leaders of the EU, France, Germany, Armenia and Azerbaijan. A statement was supposed to be adopted and signed by the five leaders, in which Armenia and Azerbaijan should have recognized mutually each other’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of borders, agreed on delimitation of borders based on the Almaty Declaration and opening of regional connectivity links based on full respect of countries’ sovereignty and jurisdiction, as well as on the principles of equality and reciprocity. The leader of Azerbaijan refused on the very last moment to take part in the meeting.
Furthermore, yesterday president Aliyev in Bishkek blamed the Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan for flying 6 hours to Granada for a strange meeting with the western mediation. Aliyev declared that if Armenia refuses to take part in Russia mediated negotiations, Azerbaijan will think carefully before taking part in the west mediated meetings. I think that today we as a CoE should ask a question to Azerbaijan, what is wrong with the western platform?
Thank you!”
National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia
