Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

Azerbaijan has urged the European Parliament to demand that Armenia carry out capital repairs on a collapsing dam located in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, Chairman of Azerbaijani Delegation to the Euronest PA and President of the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan, MP Elkhan Suleymanov said on July 2.

Sarsang, the highest water reservoir of Azerbaijan situated 726 meters above sea level (with the dam 125 meters high and capacity of 560 million cubic meters), was built on the Tartar River during the Soviet times in 1976.

As a result of the Armenian occupation following a brutal war in the early 1990s, seven regions of Azerbaijan can no longer use water from the reservoir, which is currently in an emergency condition as it has not been maintained due to the occupation.

Azerbaijan's appeal was supported by residents living near the reservoir.

The residents hope that interference of Europe will force Armenia to determine the level of risk posed by the dam and carry out its thorough technical inspection. They also focus on the fact that for 20 years Armenia has prevented the use of the dam, which was built for irrigation purposes.

Engineers and hydrologists have predicted that if the dam fails it will inundate more than 30 villages. Currently the risk of disaster due to an accident is very high and the lives of 400,000 Azerbaijani citizens who live in the six regions downstream are in immediate danger.

The Wall Street Journal has published an article on Sarsang Reservoir. According to the article, MPs from 18 European nations have called for "urgent and immediate political action" over the state of the reservoir in an emergency motion to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

However, Azerbaijan, which initiated the motion, says it is not confident of it getting the attention it deserves given the way other recent motions - which have asked tough questions of Armenia - have been dismissed by PACE, Azerbaijan's state news agency Azertag reported.

The motion detailed Azerbaijan's call for "urgent and immediate political action by PACE, stressing the possible result of humanitarian catastrophe of the very poor and dangerous condition of Sarsang reservoir."

It was supported by 45 MPs from nations including Italy, San Marino, United Kingdom, Finland, Bulgaria, France, Poland, Andorra, Spain, Macedonia, Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Romania, Lithuania, Ireland and Austria.

But despite the support, Elkhan Suleymanov said he is not hopeful of getting it debated given what he calls the "pro-Armenian bias" of institutions, including PACE.

"In April a motion critical of Armenia's illegal occupation was vetoed in PACE and in May a second motion backed by 31 MPs was given no time for debate. Likewise, a motion last week that was sponsored by one tenth of all PACE members is unlikely to be debated," he said.

"At every turn, motions critical of Armenia are made to vanish by PACE."

Azerbaijan is concerned that the situation could get worse now that Armenia has assumed the six-month presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.

Suleymanov said, "How do you assess the chairmanship of a state which keeps under military occupation the territories of another member state?"

But he says he remains committed to using PACE as an "instrument of raising awareness of the illegal occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh".

Despite resolutions of the United Nations, PACE, the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Parliament, Armenia still occupies a part of Azerbaijani territory, a conflict that has displaced over one million people.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that sparked a lengthy war in the early 1990s. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenia's withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day.