PACE AND ARMENIA IN THE SAME DOMAIN
Gevorg Harutyunyan
Hayots Ashkhar Daily
Published on June 18, 2008
Armenia
And Pursue The Same Objective
The National Assembly continued its extraordinary session convened the
day before. The MPs particularly confirmed the NA Statement regarding
the process of the implementation of PACE 1609 resolution. The decision
was adopted by 80 for and 2 abstained votes.
Three MPs from "Heritage" party Raffi Hovhannisyan, Vardan Khachatryan
and Zaruhi Postanjyan were simply absent. And those four MPs from
"Heritage" party who were present voted against.
It is noteworthy that Victor Dallakyan and Speaker of the National
Assembly Tigran Torosyan abstained from voting.
Victor Dallakyan underscored that he is the only MP who has proposed
to make changes and supplementations in the bill of NA Statement. "I
have submitted 19 written proposals, the overwhelming majority of
which has been adopted and included in the final version of the
statement. Anyhow I believe Armenia must be such a state that will
not need implementation of similar resolutions.
It is up to the Council of Europe to decide whether or not the NA
statement will meet the demands of the Council of Europe. Resolution
1609 was a "yellow card" shown to Armenia and sobering factor for
the ruling power. The resolution also shows the level of democracy
in our country, which is unfortunately not satisfactory. We must be
able to solve our problems without any interference. Democracy is an
internal necessity and far not a show off for foreign countries. The
imitation of meeting the demands is more dangerous than refusing them."
RPA vice-Chairman, MP Razmik Zohrabyan said: "We are Council of
Europe member country and we have certain obligations towards this
international instance. And this resolution is from the framework of
our obligations. It can’t be a formality, because Council of Europe
will simply not agree to such process. And the speculations of the
political opposition I hope won’t give grounds to PACE to reproach
our delegates during the forthcoming session.
Armen Ashotyan said in addition to his party member, that not the
foreign world but Armenian society is the target and consumer of the
NA Statement.
"The statement has summed up the process of the implementation of the
resolution during those two months. Unfortunately there are people in
Armenia who are simply masochists, and they feel pleasure by seeing
Armenia under foreign pressure."
Political Secretary of "Heritage" party Vardan Khachatryan said:
"It would have been right to attach a schedule to what has been
submitted. During the discussions I think no one disagreed that we
didn’t meet the demands of the Council of Europe and we didn’t also
respond to the question, regarding "when we will finally fulfill
our obligations?"
We can only say that we have started a certain process, but we can’t
say that we have fulfilled all our obligations."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
