As for the head of our delegation to the EU, Tigran Torosyan, he assures that no statement will be made on Karabakh conflict after January 23. “There is no issue like that in the agenda and it will not be discussed there”, says Tigran Torosyan, “Of course I have already got used to such things, when Armenian Media representatives mechanically write what the Azeri media does. They lie inside and outside their country, and it is a pity that there are still people who don’t understand this”.
Mr. Torosyan also said that the EU will not discuss the statement on the Constitutional referendum either, when the EU observers wrote in the final statement of the EU bureau that the polling stations were empty on the referendum day. We asked T. Torosyan whether the Armenian delegation has any facts to contradict this statement, to which he answered: “The delegation doesn’t have to approve or reject any critics. I think there are a lot of shortcomings in this statement, regarding which I have sent a letter to the head of the delegation that made the statement. One of those shortcomings is that when speaking about shortcomings they’d better write the names of the certain polling stations. By making unclear statements they don’t help us and create extra confusion. Yes, there is information both about the referendum in Armenia and elections in Kazakhstan. This means that the problem will not be discussed separately and they will not refer to this issue as separate discussion. There is not going to be any formula either. They are just going to inform that their delegation has taken part in the monitoring activities of the referendum. I mean if they had concrete facts they’d better write concrete information about those facts.” Even more, in order to come to such a conclusion those observers had to visit all the polling stations, but not only 150 ones. “It is easy to calculate and say that 8 people are not enough to monitor electoral procedures in 150 polling stations. This means that they were present at the polling stations for several minutes in each, and thus this short period is not enough to make a final conclusion about the whole process”, said Tigran Torosyan. Concerning the violations registered by the oppositional powers Mr. Torosyan says that instead of demanding to found a new commission they have to send these facts to the general public prosecutor’s office. “Observers said that it would be better if the NA took part in the process of punishing violators, I think they are not familiar with the rules of our NA: there are some countries in the world that can be involved in such investigative activities. Our National Assembly doesn’t have the right to punish violators. The public prosecutor’s office should do this”, says Tigran Torosyan. Mr. Torosyan is sure that NA commissions are effective to carry out different activities, but not like this.
According to Mr. Torosyan these kinds of definitions that may be included in the statement of the EU can’t have any negative influence on Armenia. “This shows that although there are shortcomings written in the statement, but the monitoring group doesn’t offer to pay special attention to this issue”, says Tigran Torosyan, “Azerbaijan would dream of having their elections included in the statement just like our referendum is. But as the agenda draft shows, it is not included there yet”. By the way, Tigran Torosyan explains the issue regarding being included in the statement or not in a very different way: “I think the special attention that I mean is not to be involved in the statement, but to be excluded from it. In this case they will not adopt any formulas and impose punishment on Armenia like on Azerbaijan”.
According to Mr. Torosyan there mustn’t be any elections like this in Armenia in the future. “Otherwise we will be faced with serious problems”, said Tigran Torosyan. According to him if they make the same estimations regarding the elections in 2007-2008, it may have an influence on the Karabakh conflict regulation process.