ISSUE ABOUT SANCTIONS TOWARDS ARMENIA HAS NOT BEEN DISCUSSED IN STRASBOURG

PanARMENIAN.Net - The free interpretation of the 53rd point of the report of the observers allowed some reporters to comment the initiative of Shrainer as a call to impose sanctions over Armenia. Meanwhile, there are no grounds for this kind of conclusions. The proposal of the reporter was not put to the vote. It means that the 53rd point can not have any legal consequences. The fact that the report contains a call to send an observer mission to Armenia gives an additional sense to the 53rd point. This means a call to postpone the decision and recognize the powers of Armenian delegation only after the observers fix a positive progress. In any case, the issue of sanctions was not touched upon in Strasbourg. While Azerbaijan was threatened to be sanctioned if the political prisoners are not released within September.

We shall note that the call not to approve the powers of Armenian delegation was negatively taken by many European parliamentarians. For example, the reporter of the PACE monitoring group on Armenia Irzhi Yaskerni noted the non-correspondence of Bernard Shraider's initiative to the logic of the actions of the observation mission. The content of the 53rd point was condemned also by the French MP Roslan. In any case, we deal with the fact that the commissions of the Armenian delegation are not recognized up to now. However, is there a necessity to connect it with the report of Shrainer? Judging from the behavior of the National Assembly authorities, it can be supposed that it itself decided not to hurry with this issue having foreseen the reaction of the European legislators about the violations taken place during the elections. That is why, not all the members of the delegation were sent to Strasbourg but only two of them previously working there. Besides, the Constitutional court has not yet considered the suit on announcing the proportional elections invalid. It was senseless to discuss the issue on recognizing the powers at the summer session. That is why the Armenian party accepted with understanding the decision of the PACE Bureau to consider this issue at the autumn session to start in September.

It is interesting that despite the expectations, the Azerbaijani delegation did not try to make use of the situation for discrediting Armenia. None of the Azerbaijani deputies said anything during the discussion of the initiative of Shrainer. Ilham Aliyev said that the elections were the internal issue of Armenia and for Azerbaijan it was not important how they were held and who won. The position of Aliyev can be understood, as Strasbourg practices the principle of parity towards Armenia and Azerbaijan. Taking into account this fact it might be noted that as the PACE has shown a harsh reaction to the political repressions of the dissidents, it shows a severe attitude towards Armenia as well. It can be assumed that the ultimatum put by the Strasbourg to the official Baku has influenced the attitude to Yerevan. So, maybe Armenia has suffered not only for own crimes but also "for company".