TIGRAN TOROSIAN: PACE RESOLUTION WILL HELP TO PUT AN AND TO SPECULATIONS OF AZERIS

Noyan Tapan
Armenians Today
Apr 17 2006

YEREVAN, APRIL 17, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The Resolution
adopted on April 13 at the plenary sitting of PACE on issues on
refugees and forcibly displaced people in Armenia, Azerbaijan
and Georgia will permit to put an and to the speculations
of Azerbaijan. Head of the PACE Armenian delegation, RA NA
Vice-Speaker Tigran Torosian expressed such an opinion at the
April 17 press conference touching upon the discussion of the issue
immediately concerning Armenia at April 10-13 PACE spring session
in Strasbourg. T.Torosian motivated his opinion by the fact that
the adopted document exactly stipulates the data of the UN Supreme
Commissar on issues of refugees, according to which there were a little
more than 83 thousand refugees during the conflict in Azerbaijan and
in late 2004 their number reached 8606. The number of the displaced
persons in Azerbaijan amounted to about 570 thousand people. Whereas,
he emphasized, in the recent years the Azeris have been trumpeting
about existence of 1 mln refugees in the country. He also mentioned
that the attempts of the Azerbaijani delegation to withdraw data not
favorable for them from the report failed. In total, 35 proposals
on the draft Resolution were submitted, 18 of them were submitted by
the Azerbaijani delegation. 5 proposals of editing character out of
the above-mentioned ones were adopted. As a result, the provisions
of the Resolution, according to which refugees can return to places
of their residence remained unchanged. This is a right fixed in the
international documents and not a commitment as the Azeris propose. The
proposal about cooperation among 3 South Caucasian countries for the
purpose of solving the issue of refugees was also preserved in the
document. Azeris spoke against this proposal. Tigran Torosian said
that reporter on the issue, Latvian Deputy Boris Tsilevich in his
speech informed that works connected with refugees are implemented
in Armenia at the high level. Meanwhile he expressed the hope that
if Armenia is provided with the proper international support it will
be able to solve the issue of refugees not within several years but
within only several months.