PACE head criticizes Armenia
By Nazrin Gadimova
PACE members are free to discuss any issue that they consider appropriate.
Newly appointed president of the PACE, Pedro Agramunt made the remark at the weekly meeting of representatives committee of the Council of Europe, the dailykarabakh.com website reported.
Addressing the meeting, Agramunt spoke about the fight against international terrorism, freedom to live safely, the crisis of refugees and migration crisis, as well as promotion of good-neighborly relations between countries.
The new head of PACE emphasized the CoE member states sovereignty and territorial integrity. Moreover, Agramunt especially noted the continuation of the discussion on frozen conflicts in some regions of Europe, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
During the discussion on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Pedro Agramunt sharply criticized the Armenian delegation.
Thus, Armenia’s representative to PACE expressed dissatisfaction with the “Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan” expression that Agramunt used in his speech. She voiced a disagreement with this statement, considering it incorrect to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in PACE, given the permissions of the OSCE Minsk Group.
In response, Agramunt said PACE members are free to discuss any issue that they consider appropriate, adding that the long lasting Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict should be resolved and that ‘hiding head in a sand like an ostrich’ will not bring any results.
Earlier, Turkish delegation to the PACE made a protest against Naira Zohrabyan, Armenian member of the PACE Bureau.
Zohrabian behaved disrespectfully against the Turkish representative Margar Yesayan (ethnic Armenian) who voted for adopting resolution titled “The escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories of Azerbaijan” during the PACE winter session on January 26.
Armenian Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper reported that it is possible that Zohrabyan will be sanctioned at the spring session of PACE to be held in April 2016.
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Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova
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