Armenia’s speaker, Council of Europe leader discuss regional cooperation

Arminfo, Yerevan
6 Jul 04

YEREVAN

Armenian National Assembly Chairman Artur Bagdasaryan and the visiting
secretary-general of the Council of Europe, Bruno Haller, have
discussed the prospects for developing cooperation between the
Armenian National Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe (PACE). The head of the PACE secretariat, (?Wojtech
Savitskiy) and an executive director of the secretary-general of PACE,
(?Peter Sich), took also part in the meeting, the press service of the
Armenian parliament told Arminfo news agency today.

The participants noted during the meeting that the Armenian parliament
is doing its best to meet Armenia’s commitments to the Council of
Europe in the set period. Artur Bagdasaryan noted the importance of
the opposition’s participation in the constitutional and electoral
reforms and the opposition’s return to legislative activity. For his
part, Bruno Haller noted that PACE never welcomed boycotts in any
country and has called and is always calling for a return to
legislative work in similar cases. The prospects of developing
regional cooperation, holding joint consultations and forums between
Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan at various political levels and
elaboration and implementation of joint programmes were discussed at
the meeting.

Cooperation of the standing commissions and administration of the
Armenian National Assembly with PACE were also discussed, as was Artur
Bagdasaryan’s initiative to hold under the PACE aegis a forum on
European integration in 2005, to mark the 10th anniversary of the
Armenian National Assembly, which, Bagdasaryan said, will undoubtedly
reinforce democratization and cooperation.