Thursday, June 13 2019 15:40

ArmInfo.Decisions of the French courts on the abolition of the declarations of friendship between the French and Artsakh cities are reprehensible. Representative of the "Hay Dat" offices of ARF Dashnaktsutyun Kiro Manoyan expressed such an opinion in an interview with ArmInfo correspondent.

In his opinion, the number of similar verdicts of the French courts will increase over time. Dashnaktsakan stated that this is due to the fact that the French authorities believe that the French local governments do not have the right to conduct their own foreign policy. "The French authorities believe that representatives of the local governments deviate from the official foreign policy of the country by such steps, since official Paris does not recognize Artsakh's independence. However, I believe this approach is erroneous, as the local governments have the right to communicate with local self-government units," Manoyan said, in this context, he added that in February of this year, French President Emmanuel Macron at the annual dinner of the Coordination Council of Armenian organizations of the country tried to touch on this issue. At the same time, the Member of ARFD is convinced that no matter how the French side tried to argue their actions, this step proceeds from the interests of one of the parties, namely Azerbaijan.

"This is a violation of neutrality, which France has so far adhered to," said Manoyan. According to him, it would be more correct if the French authorities, as before, did not interfere in the activities of the local governments and maintained their neutrality. "We condemn this step by the French authorities. The "Hay Dat" office in Europe is already discussing how to respond and counteract this. We are deeply convinced that this decision was biased," Manoyan said. The representative of ARFD also categorically disagreed with the rumors circulating that the decisions of the French courts were due to the inaction of Hay Dat due to the attitude of the current authorities of Armenia to "Dashnaktsutyun". "There are issues that are fundamental for Hay Dat, among which Artsakh and the Bureau are doing everything possible to advance the interests of the unrecognized republic. However, this does not mean that the Armenian authorities should be inactive," Manoyan said, adding that these decisions became possible after the Azerbaijani side filed a lawsuit in a French court. According to him, the Armenian authorities did not adequately counteract these steps of Azerbaijan. At the same time, Dashnaktsakan pointed out that Armenia has enough leverage to initiate similar declarations of friendship between Artsakh and other units in the same United States or Australia, or other countries where there are no legislative regulations of similar in France and prohibiting direct interaction, however nothing is done in this direction. To recall, court of Cergy-Pontoise of the French Val-d'Oise department to declare invalid a declaration of friendship between the French municipality of Arnuville and Artsakh's community of Shekher .On the eve it also became known that the administrative court of the city of Grenoble decided to abolish four more charters of friendship signed by representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh with French settlements - the departments of Valence, Bourg-les-Valence, Bourg-de-Perange. The administrative court abolished the charter, guided by the arguments that they do not respect the international obligations of France and are contrary to the foreign policy of the country, which is the exclusive competence of the state.