PACE committed procedural violation, by resuming sub-committee on Karabakh - Armenian MP

By passing a decision to resume the sub-committee on Nagorno Karabakh, the PACE bureau committed a procedural violation at its Friday session, a member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, Naira Zohrabyan, told Tert.am.

She said the Armenian delegation had sent to the secretariat an open letter, stating in detail the reasons it considered the committee's work unacceptable.

"All the representatives of the assembly were supposed to have one copy of the letter this morning, but the Armenian delegation members noticed that the copies were missing from their tables," she said, adding that the meeting had paved the way for PACE President Mevlut Chavusoglu to get one of his most urgent problems resolved.

The Armenian parliamentarian noted with regret that no one apart from Armenian delegation members had objected to the decision on resuming the sub-committee.

"I had a personal meeting with the French representative and handed to him the letter, explaining the inexpediency of the committee's work within the PACE format. I reminded him of the statements made by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, who had stressed several times that no proposal beyond the Minsk Group format could be acceptable. He promised to try his best to raise the problem in the Bureau, but made no single comment on that score at the session. The Armenian side has by all means to introduce its position to the French representatives," Zohrabyan noted.

She also added that upon her return to Yerevan she will call on the French co-chair to give certain explanations on the issue.

"We said in our statement that the Armenian side is unwilling to get involved in processes that may negatively affect the negotiations," she said.