PACE SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONFLICT PREVENTION ESTABLISHED

PanARMENIAN.Net
23.02.2010 19:37 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Karabakh conflict issue is activated regularly
in international organizations and I do not think that a new process
has started. We just started to pay more attention to it, David
Harutyunyan , head of the Armenian delegation in PACE told a news
conference in Yerevan.

Referring to the resumption of the work of Subcommittee on
Nagorno-Karabakh, Harutyunyan said that this issue is on the agenda
of PACE Bureau, but is delayed for different reasons.

The PACE subcommittee on prevention of conflicts has been established.

According to Harutyunyan, this structure is likely to hurt than help
resolve conflicts.

The armed conflict between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan broke
out in 1998, as result of the ethnic cleansing the latter launched
in the final years of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh War was fought
from 1991 (when the Nagorno Karabakh Republic was proclaimed) to 1994
(when a ceasefire was sealed by Armenia, NKR and Azerbaijan). Most
of Nagorno Karabakh and a security zone consisting of 7 regions is
now under control of NKR defense army. Armenia and Azerbaijan are
holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group up till now.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which held
its first session in Strasbourg on 10 August 1949, can be considered
the oldest internationalparliamentary assembly with a pluralistic
composition of democratically elected members of parliament established
on the basis of an intergovernmental treaty. The Assembly is one of
the two statutory organs of the Council of Europe, which is composed of
the Committee of Ministers (the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, meeting
usually at the level of their deputies) and the Assembly representing
the political forces (majority and opposition) in its member states.

It has a total of 642 members – 321 principal members and
321 substitutes [1] – who are representatives of each member
state. There are also 18 delegates from the Canadian, Israeli and
Mexican observers. The size of each country determines its number
of representatives and number of votes. This is in contrast in the
committee of ministers, where each country has one vote.

Each State member selects its method of designating its representatives
to the parliamentary assembly; however, they must be chosen from among
the members of the respective Parliaments. Moreover, the political
composition of each national delegation must reflect the representation
of the different parties within the respective parliaments.