PACE CO-REPORTERS MET HEADS OF ARMENIAN PARLIAMENT

ArmInfo
2008-06-17 14:13:00

Yesterday, members of PACE Monitoring Commission Georges Colombier
and John Prescott, as well as CE Special Representative to RA Bojana
Urumova, who arrived in Armenia, met the Armenian parliament speaker
Tigran Torosyan. The co- reporters arrive din Armenia to assess
fulfillment of PACE Resolution N1609 ‘On Functioning of Democratic
Institutes in Armenia’.

As RA parliamentary press service reported, during the meeting, Georges
Colombier said that PACE is concerned by holding of an independent,
transparent investigation of March 1-2 events in Yerevan and offered
to involve independent judges to the work of the Commission. By his
assessments, ombudsman of Armenia may play a serious role in this
work, while the report he presented was perceived as an excess of
powers. For his part, T. Torosyan said that the country’s parliament
is seriously working with CE Venice Commission as regards fulfillment
of the Resolution: a draft law on holding of rallies, processions
and meetings, which will be ratified by the country’s president some
of these days, has been passed. He also said about creation of a
temporary parliamentary commission on investigation of March events,
which should give answers to the supposed questions. Torosyan said that
he sees no obstacles for involvement of RA ombudsman in this process.

Talking of the arrests, Torosyan emphasized that three are no political
prisoners in Armenia. T. Torosyan added that he has already applied to
the Prosecutor General’s Office with request to provide an information
about the work done by the investigation on the case of accusations
of parliamentarians, on which he will inform the co-reporters.

To note, the co-reporters also met Head of the Armenian delegation
to PACE David Harutyunyan and representatives of the parliamentary
opposition from ‘Heritage’ party.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress