TIGRAN TOROSIAN: ARMENIAN DELEGATION TO PACE WORKS VERY ACTIVELY

YEREVAN, JANUARY 30, NOYAN TAPAN. The plenary session of the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe held on January 22-26
in Strasbourg was, probably, the last for the Armenian delegation of
the National Assembly of the present convention. As Tigran Torosian,
the Armenian delegation head, NA Speaker stated at the January 29
press conference, most probably, the Armenian parliamentarians will
not take part in the next PACE session to take place in late
April. The reason is the RA NA elections to follow the session in few
days. In the NA Speaker’s words, "this is an understandable reasoning
for everybody, however, in Strasbourg."

Arising from the above-mentioned, T.Torosian considered purposeful to
sum up not only results of the session finished recently, but also the
3.5 year work of the delegation headed by him at the Assembly. In his
words, since 2001 the Assembly has adopted 5 resolutions concerning
the process of implementation of the obligations undertaken by
Armenia. The last one, resolution No1532 adopted on January 23 was an
unprecedented one for Armenia with its positive stresses compared with
the ones adopted before. "It does not mean that Armenia has no faults
and Armenia implemented all of its obligations. Just the opposite,
this resolution, fixing progress connected with fulfilling the
obligations, fixing a number of concretely successed steps, also fixes
a number of problems that Armenia must solve in future, at the same
time it fixes faults as well," the speaker said. In his words, the
faults, particularly, relate to the corruption, existing protests
connected with legal bodies’ attitude as well as to the Parliament’s
refusal of the draft on making amendments to the law on television and
radio. The Assembly also sees some deeds in the direction of
liquidating the faults existing in the law on alternative service.

Summing up the Armenian delegation’s work at the Assembly, T.Torosian
expressed an opinion that the delegation, but not all of its members,
worked very actively. The result is both adopted resolutions and
positions they got at the Assembly committees. He especially reminded
that when the delegation started its work, it inherited resolution
No1304, where it was said that if some steps were not taken,
commissions of the Armenian delegation would stop. "The life showed
that not only it did not happen in future, but, I think, important
documents, resolutions were adopted for Armenia," T.Torosian said. In
his words, it relates both to implementation of the obligations and to
problem of refugees in the region as well as to Nagorno Karabakh
problem, "and even connected with the April, 2004, events we managed
to secure by a good work, in a very strained situation, adoption of a
resoltuion which had vital importance in future for weakening the
tension in Armenia."