Thursday, October 24 2013

Nagorno-Karabakh should not suffer from the EU's discontent with Armenia's policy, Samvel Farmanyan, MP from the ruling Republican Party of Armenia, Co-chairman of the Commission for Armenia-EU Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation, told ArmInfo when commenting on the European Parliament's resolution on the European Neighborhood.   

Farmanyan said that the document's provisions run counter to the European Union's official stance on the Karabakh conflict, as well as to the whole logic of the Karabakh peace process in the OSCE Minsk Group format.   

"I remember no other resolution to contain so rough and unilateral assessments divorced from the reality.  Certainly, here we cannot neglect the circumstance that the adoption of this resolution reflects the situational approach in relation to the latest developments (Armenia's decision to join the Customs Union - editor's note). I think our partners in the European Parliament are guided by wrong considerations", he said. 
The MP said that the Karabakh peace process has its own peculiar format. Moreover, when Azerbaijan displays a non-constructive stance, torpedoes all the initiatives to enhance confidence, undermines the efforts to prevent the incidents on the Line of Contact and fails to implement its commitments, the adoption of such a unilateral resolution hampers the peace process.     

Farmanyan is also concerned about the fact that the resolution directly links the signing of the Association Agreement by Armenia and Azerbaijan with the Karabakh conflict settlement. "I think it is necessary to actively work with the European Parliament, to present the specificity of the situation in the conflict zone and to make Europe understand that even in case of certain discontent and unjustified hopes connected with the Armenia-EU relations, one should never direct the discontent against Nagorno-Karabakh", he said. 

To recall, at the plenary session of the European Parliament on 23 October, a draft resolution on the European Neighborhood was adopted.  Azerbaijani media outlets report that in the paragraph #16, the resolution "denounces the occupation by one country of the Eastern Partnership of the territory of another and states that the settlement of Armenian Azerbaijan Nagorno Karabakh Conflict should comply with UN Security Council Resolutions."
The document "recalls its position that the occupation by one country of the Eastern Partnership of the territory of another violates the fundamental principles and objectives of the Eastern Partnership and that the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should comply with UN Security Council resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of 1993 and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group Basic Principles, enshrined in the L'Aquila joint statement of 10 July 2009".