Monday, April 18 2016 18:54

Despite the fact that by the decision of PACE Bureau no discussions on Karabakh problem are scheduled at the April session of PACE, the Armenian parliamentarians touched upon the events in the region during their speeches, particularly the four-day war unleashed by Azerbaijan in the zone of Karabakh conflict. 

Thus, Republican MP Samvel Farmanyan stated in his speech that in recent months European values have been brutally and cynically attacked, first in the very heart of Europe - bloody terror attacks in Brussels, and then on the southeastern shore of our continent - in Nagorno-Karabakh where Azerbaijan unleashed a large-scale military aggression against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh violating international humanitarian law and committing war crimes. 

Further in his speech Farmanyan recalled that the voices against the controversial reports by Robert Walter and Milica Markovic during PACE winter session were based on the tangible assumption that any attempt to approve groundless and one-sided resolutions or any selective application to the principles of international law will only damage the peace process and serve as smokescreen for the Azerbaijani autocratic leadership to resume large scale military actions undermining the peace process and threatening fragile stability in the entire region of South Caucasus. "While raising concerns we had in mind such development of the events that happened afterwards and unfortunately, our concerns became to be a kind of bad prediction that cost hundreds of innocent lives from all sides of the conflict", Farmanyan noted. 

At the same time he stressed that while increasingly strong and univocal message of the international community to Aliev was a window of hope for peace to avoid further escalation of the situation, irresponsible rhetoric of Mr. Agramunt, came to contradict Assembly to the international community this time not by ignorance of excessive human rights violations in Azerbaijan but by his exceptionally dangerous wording clearly siding himself with Azerbaijan in that particularly fragile situation.  Unfortunately, Mr. Agramunt's statement came to once again question his impartiality as President of the Assembly and empowers media reports about his alleged engagement in Azerbaijani lobbying structures seriously damaging Assembly's image in the eyes of millions of Europeans and all members of the House of Democracy.

To note, in his statement made during the four-day war PACE President Pedro Agramunt stressed the necessity to settle Karabakh conflict according to the principle of territorial integrity of the states, which is Baku's official stand on the issue.