PARLIAMENT PREPARES FOR THE UPCOMING MEETING

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
04 Feb 05

The National Assembly resumed its work after the winter holidays. The
head of the NA state and legal committee Youri Hayrapetian said the
new session is heavily loaded. The committee is presently working on
about 10 bills part of which will be discussed at the upcoming
meeting. Among these is the NKR bill `On Human Rights Defender’
(undertaken by the head of the NA committee for foreign relations,
interparliamentary links and information V. Atanessian) which was
adopted at the first reading. According to Y. Hayrapetian, the
suggestions made by the committee are presently discussed by the
author of the bill. The state and legal committee is working on the
amendments to the bill `On Administrative Division of NKR’ presented
by the government, which concern the status of certain settlements. By
the bill `On Civil Service’ the Executive suggests introducing a new
order of appealing the results of the competition before going to the
court. There is also a suggestion to clarify the order of work of the
competition and qualification commissions. In the current year the
National Assembly prepares for the adoption of the country’s most
important document – the Constitution. Therefore there occurred the
necessity for amendments to the law `On the Order of Adoption of the
Constitution’. According to the bill presented by the government, the
Constitution must be adopted through a referendum undertaken by the
president or the National Assembly. It is alsonecessary to make
changes in the NA regulations which will maintain the mechanism of
discussion of the draft constitution in the parliament meeting. The
state and legal committee gave a positive conclusion for the bills `On
Amendments to the NKR NA Regulations’ and `On Amendments to the Law on
the National Assembly’ but both the committee and Vahram Atanessian
(the author) preferred to present them at the end of the
session. `These bills may cause structural changes in the parliament
(change of names of committees, creation of new committees, etc.) so
it is convenient that they should work under the National Assembly of
the fourth convocation,’ said Y. Hayrapetian. The amendments provided
for by the bills start from the necessity of clarifying the rights and
responsibilities of the NA standing committees and improving the
effectiveness of the legislative activity of the National Assembly.

AA.
04-02-2005