AGENDA OF PACE SESSION TO START ON APRIL 10 INCLUDES TWO ISSUES DIRECTLY RELATED TO ARMENIA
Noyan Tapan
Mar 27 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 27, NOYAN TAPAN. The spring session of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will be convened on
April 10-13 in Strasbourg. Unlike other sessions, it will last
4 days because Easter will be celebrated on April 14 in European
countries. Tigran Torosian, Head of the Armenian delegation in PACE,
Vice Speaker of the RA National Assembly, stated this at the March
27 press conference. According to him, there are two issues directly
related to Armenia on the session agenda: the state of refugees and
displaced persons in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and the human
rights of the armed forces members. Boris Tsilevich, PACE deputy
from Lithuania, is the rapporteur on the first issue. Discussions
on the report will be held at the plenary sitting on April 13. The
issue was ready to be put on the January session’s agenda, but was
not put since the agenda had already included too many issues. The
rapporteur on the second issue is Alexandr Arabajiev, representative
of Bulgaria. Although the draft resolution of the rapporteur is not
directly related to Armenia and the country is not indicated here,
the armed forces’ state in the Council of Europe member states is
presented in various points of the rapporteur’s memorandum. Point 35
of the memorandum is dedicated to Armenia and contains data on the
situation in the Armenian armed forces in 2001-2003. According to
T.Torosian, the draft was submitted to the RA Defence Ministry for
examination. If some inaccuracy is found regarding the report facts,
the Armenian side will ask the rapportuer to make his memorandum more
accurate, since there is no mechanism for changing the memorandum of a
rapporteur, unlike a draft resolution or a draft recommendation. The
head of the Armenian delegation noted that there are other issues
of interest on the agenda, particularly the report on fight against
corruption and poverty in the CE member states. The issues to be
urgently put on the agenda have not been specified yet. The decision
about it will be made during the discussion of the agenda.
The speaker also presented the upcoming visits to be paid to Armenia
by PACE official representatives. Particularly, the visit of the
rapporteur on the state of women in the three South Caucasian countries
– Russian deputy in PACE Vera Oskina to Armenia is scheduled for
April. The rapporteur on the issue of missing persons in the three
South Caucasian states – Dutch deputy Leo Platvoit will visit the
region in May-June. The date of the visit of representatives the
PACE Monitoring Committee – co-rapporteurs on Armenia has not been
specified yet. T. Torosian said that in all likelihood the visit will
be paid in August.