But there is one thing for sure: there was no progress in the country during the past five years. On the contrary, things are getting worse day by day. Despite the European Council requirements, in Armenia human rights are still violated, elections go against the Armenian Constitution and laws based on international norms, the Karabagh authorities continue to lead negotiations regarding the peace settlement and have not come to a solution yet.
Vice-speaker of the National Assembly and leader of the Armenian delegation of the European Council Tigran Torosyan held a press conference yesterday where he announced that Armenia has “practically fulfilled all the responsibilities” that it had to take on as a member of the council. According to Torosyan, the National Assembly has passed some laws based on the requirements. All the National Assembly has to do is make some changes in the law regarding elections, which is a result of the constitutional referendum. As for the requirement of settling the Karabagh conflict peacefully, according to Tigran Torosyan, the two countries can not rush into the peace settlement and the bureau will soon discuss this and set a deadline.
“I think that Armenia does not have any special responsibilities when it comes to the Karabagh peace settlement,” says Tigran Torosyan.
According to Torosyan, the European Council will hear the next speech about Armenia’s requirements in the fall session in October.
The Armenian side has assigned a new speaker for the monitoring committee for the European Council requirements. The speaker is Mikko Elon, who is from Finland and a social-democrat MP. Elon will visit Armenia in summer 2006. Besides Elon, speaker for the world culture heritage maintenance branch of the European Council Leo Platvoyt will also visit Armenia, as well as the speakers for refugees of the countries within the region. Tigran Torosyan has been elected as president of the monitoring committee. President of the National Assembly’s Foreign Relations committee and ARF member Armen Rustamyan is also one of the members of the committee. Tigran Torosyan said yesterday that they will do their best to have Stepan Demirchyan join the monitoring committee.
During yesterday’s press conference, Torosyan talked about what happened when the Azeri side made its speech. Due to the electoral fraud during the parliamentary elections, the Azeri side faced the danger of losing the right to vote in the European Council until May, however, after thorough discussions their punishment only lasted three days.
“It would be better for the Azeri side to be deprived of their right to vote until May,” said Mr. Torosyan. He added that the European Council member country was punishing a country like this for the first time in the past two years. According to the leader of the Armenian delegation, there was a certain group of people that helped make the punishment shorter. The Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Mamedyarov himself was at the European Council two days before the session asking the president to delay the discussions until the May elections.
“However, that doesn’t change the picture,” said Torosyan forgetting about the fact that the elections in Armenia were also ridiculous.
We also talked with former leader of the European Council’s Armenian delegation and president of the Armenian Liberal Progressive Party Hovhannes Hovhannisyan concerning the European Council’s requirements. According to him, Armenia has fulfilled its requirements formally. Although there have been changes made in Armenia’s Constitution and some laws have been passed with the order of the European Council, however, those laws are only on paper and have no effect.
“The laws that were supposed to make some changes in the economic and political fields are not applied,” says the former leader of the European Council’s Armenian delegation. Basically, all hopes were in vain.
“We are backing down. The elections were humiliating, there was no freedom of speech and press, there were limits set on human rights and periodically violated. We don’t see the progress that we were expecting after joining the EU,” says H. Hovhannisyan. In Hovhannisyan’s words, from this point of view parallels have always been drawn between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“Armenia wasn’t able to prove that it has developed more than Azerbaijan and it made its way to the level of Azerbaijan. They became the same type of countries where there are the same mafia laws,” said H. Hovhannisyan. After all this, the leader of the Armenian Liberal Progressive Party says:
“Either there have to be sanctions for both countries, or there will be no sanctions at all.”
P.S. Leader of the “Justice” alliance Stepan Demirchyan wasn’t able to make a speech during the winter session of the European Council. In regard to this, leader of the Armenian delegation Tigran Torosyan said that they didn’t intend on doing that.
“There were no bad intentions,” he said.
According to Torosyan, Demirchyan was the second on the list to make a speech.
“The secretarial office reviews some things and this has happened before,” said T. Torosyan. He added:
“The MPs that want to make a speech and are not listed, well, they are usually placed last.”
As a matter of fact, although A. Rustamyan was registered much later than Demirchyan and Torosyan, he made his speech first.