Azerbaijani community in Lithuania opposes 'friendship group with Nagorno-Karabakh'
By Sara Rajabova
Azerbaijani diaspora in Lithuania is working hard to achieve invalidation of the "Friendship Group with Nagorno-Karabakh" in the Lithuanian Seim (parliament), chairman of Azerbaijan's State Committee for Work with Diaspora Nazim Ibrahimov said on his Facebook page on July 30.
According to Ibrahimov, in March 2013 12 deputies of the Lithuanian Seim set up a "friendship group with Nagorno-Karabakh." Immediately thereafter, chairman of the Society of Lithuanian Azerbaijanis Mahir Gamzaev and president of the Lithuania-Azerbaijan Association Imantas Melyanas sent a joint request on behalf of the Azerbaijani organizations of Lithuania to the Seim leadership. The request stated that in the bylaws regulating the activities of the Seim, there is no clause on the "Friendship Group". The authors of the request demanded explaining under what law the group is operating and what is its status.
"The leaders of Azerbaijani organizations have made suggestions relating to...the elimination of such groups that do not meet the requirements of the Seim Charter," says a letter of the chairman of the steering board of the Chamber of Information of the Lithuanian Peoples, co-founder of the Lithuania-Azerbaijan Association, Vitaliyus Karakorskis, sent to the Azerbaijani State Committee for Work with Diaspora.
Karakorskis also noted in the letter that the chairman of the Lithuanian parliament Vidas Gedvilas instructed the committee on foreign affairs and the committee on law and legal norms of the Lithuanian parliament to study the issue in order to respond to this request and examine the proposed measures.
A few days ago the Society of Lithuanian Azerbaijanis and the Lithuania-Azerbaijan Association received a response from the Seim committees to the request they sent in June this year.
The letter, signed by the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Lithuanian parliament, representative of the ruling Social Democratic Party of Lithuania, Benediktas Juodka, said that this committee doesn't recognize the given "friendship group with the parliament of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh" as a working group on inter-parliamentary relations, because such working groups can be established only with the parliaments of states that have been recognized de jure.
"The legal basis for the establishment of a friendship group with the 'parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh' does not meet the requirements cited in the Charter of the Lithuanian Seim. According to these requirements, 'a working group on inter-parliamentary relations' can only be created with the parliaments of those countries that are legally recognized by the state. Therefore, the organization is not recognized as a 'group on inter-parliamentary relations' and in no way reflects the official view of the Lithuanian state. With regard to the measures proposed by the Society of Lithuanian Azerbaijanis and the Lithuania-Azerbaijan Association on optimization of rules of establishing inter-parliamentary working groups, they will be taken into account when proposals are made for the improvement of the Seim Charter," says the official response of the chairman of the committee on law of the Seim Julius Sabatauskas to the request of the Azerbaijani organizations in Lithuania.
According to Vitaliyus Karakorskis, the decision of the Seim committees shows that the attempts of the Armenian reactionary forces to create a "friendship group with the Parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh" have failed.
Nazim Ibrahimov said on Facebook that it is for the first time that members of parliament admitted their mistake since the establishment of the parliament of independent Lithuania. According to Ibrahimov, the proposals made by the Azerbaijani organizations will soon be adopted by the Lithuanian Seim.
"It also should be noted that these decisive measures on elimination of the 'friendship group with the parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh' were taken as a result of the lobbying activities of the Azerbaijani Diaspora in Lithuania and with the support of the initiative friends of Azerbaijan in Lithuania," Ibrahimov wrote.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an Azerbaijani region occupied by Armenia along with seven adjacent regions since a war fought by the two South Caucasus republics in the early 1990s. Years of OSCE-brokered peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.