PACE WINTER SESSION GOING TO BE UNPRECEDENTED FOR ARMENIA
Lena Badeyan

"Radiolur"
19.01.2009 16:36

The winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe (PACE) from January 26 to 30 will be unprecedented for
Armenia. Well aware of this this, this time almost all members of the
Armenian delegation will leave for Strasbourg. Only Raffi Hovhannisyan
from the "Heritage" faction will not attend PACE session. The other
seven members of the delegation – David Harutyunyan, Armen Rustamyan,
Avet Adonts, Naira Zohrabyan, Artsruni Aghajanyan, Grigori Margaryan
and Hermine Naghdalyan will be present at the sitting.

What strategy will be applied there? How will members of the Armenian
delegation work? What speeches will they make? Naira Zohrabyan and
Armen Rustamyan opened the brackets for "Radiolur."

"My speech will focus on the point that democracy cannot be built
within a day, that our value system is the European integration, we
accept the rules of that game and I do not think that application of
sanctions will be the best way for solving issues," Naira Zohrabyan
said.

"I will say the same things I said at the sitting of the Monitoring
Committee. The decision should be exceptionally a legal one and require
no political motivation. Otherwise it will result in domestic tension.

Secondly, there are countries in the world that are engaged in
0Acollecting facts against Armenia and using them."

According to Armen Rustamyan, this time the greatest difficulty
is that there is the resolution of the Monitoring Committee, which
demands application of sanctions. This is an opinion consolidated in
a document.

"We have the task to have it changed, but it’s not that easy,"
Rustamyan says.

Members of the Armenian delegation anticipate pro-Armenian speeches
from delegates of other countries. In particular, Armen Rustamyan
stresses that even during the sitting of the Monitoring Committee
the English Deputy drew everyone’s attention to the fact that for
many years there have been facts about the existence of political
prisoners in Azerbaijan, while the fact of existence of political
prisoners in Armenia has not been proved yet.

Although many assure that the sanctions of the Council of Europe will
not be a catastrophe for Armenia, the MPs say: "It will be bad for
Armenia, especially with regard to the settlement of the Karabakh
conflict. However,, Armenia will not feel the pressures deriving
from PACE sanctions tomorrow, when Minsk Group Co-Chairs are going
to visit Armenia," Armen Rustamyan says.