Pro-government MP hails Council of Europe body decision on Armenia

Mediamax, Armenia
Jan 28 2009

Pro-government MP hails Council of Europe body decision on Armenia

Yerevan, 28 January: Resolution 1643, approved yesterday at a PACE
[Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe] session, became a
triumph of common sense and a proof of excessiveness of accusations,
according to which the Armenian authorities do no have a political
will.

Member of the Armenian delegation to PACE [and a senior member of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun] Armen Rustamyan
said this in an interview to a Mediamax special correspondent in
Strasbourg.

"The working committee on making changes to Articles 225 and 300 of
the Criminal Code of Armenia, which was set up by the order of the
chairman of the Armenian parliament, caused significant changes in the
mood of PACE MPs and established prerequisites to reconsider the
initial report," the Armenian MP stated.

According to him, "now the ball is in our court and we have to present
proofs of the work realized before the session of the PACE Monitoring
Committee due in late March".

"If the Monitoring Committee makes a decision in late March, according
to which we will have not fulfilled all our commitments, it will be
extremely and almost impossible to prove anything here, and then the
issue on depriving our delegation of the right of vote will again be
put forward in PACE," Armen Rustamyan stated.

"We should try to do something for the issue concerning Armenia not to
be discussed at the spring session of PACE at all, and to do that, we
need consistent and coordinated work not only by the working group and
the parliament, but by all power branches in Armenia," he stated in
the interview to Mediamax.

Assessing the behaviour of the Azerbaijani delegates at the session,
the Armenian MP described it as a "tactical mistake". "It seemed to
them that PACE was going to ‘get rid’ of Armenia, and they decided to
make their contribution to that, but in the end they remained all
alone," Armen Rustamyan stated. "When they talk about their successful
presidential elections, I immediately recall the USSR elections, where
there were no alternatives. Sometimes it seems to our colleagues that
people in Europe do not know how the presidential elections in
Azerbaijan proceeded," he noted.