Anti-Armenian resolutions were put on agenda of the PACE Winter Session with gross violations of the Organization's regulations, says Vahan Babayan, Armenian parliamentarian from Prosperous Armenia Party, a member of the Armenian Delegation to PACE.
Talking to reporters on January 19, Vahan Babayan said PACE rapporteurs violated the PACE regulations from the very beginning as they made reports without visiting the territories and getting first-hand view of the situation. Besides, he said, their reports contain wordings that may impede the Karabakh peace process. "We are doing our utmost to prevent their adoption. We have such chances at the moment," Babayan said. He thinks if passed, these reports may lead to sanctions. Anyway, one should make a tragedy of this, the politician said.
The politician disagreed with Levon Zurabyan, another delegate to PACE who blamed the delegation for passivity that negatively affects the country's foreign policy in general. Babayan reiterated that both the members and the head of the delegation exert genuine efforts to prevent adoption of those relations.
These days the authorities of Armenia are taking active steps to prevent the adoption of two anti-Armenian draft resolutions at PACE's winter session. The matter concerns the draft resolution on "Escalation of violence in Nagorno- Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan" (rapporteur Robert Walter, UK) and the draft resolution on "Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water" (rapporteur Milica Markovic, Bosnia and Herzegovina).
The draft resolutions contain wordings running counter to the Armenian side's stand on these issues. The efforts of the Armenian Delegation to PACE to remove these documents from the winter session agenda have failed. The documents should be discussed on January 26.