National Assembly Speaker: there were no political overtones in my  meeting with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya

ArmInfo.. "There were no political overtones in my meeting with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya,"  President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Alen Simonyan told reporters on March 27.

I  simply thanked him for his speech, which contained support for  Armenia> According to him, the statements attributed to him regarding  this meeting are absurd. "We participated in the same event together,  left the meeting hall and on the sidelines of the EuroNest  PA I just  expressed gratitude to her for her speech, which expressed support  for Armenia," the Speaker said, adding that similar statements were  made in the speeches of representative delegations of other countries  as well. Simonyan emphasized that even after the speech of the  speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament, no reaction was required from  the Armenian side, since the speaking delegates fully defended the  national interests of Armenia. "I could not help but express my  gratitude to both Ms Tikhanovskaya and the other speakers. She was  just an invited guest and did not have any authority to discuss  anything," said the Speaker of the National Assembly, adding that the  conversation with Svetlana Tikhanovskaya cannot even be considered as  a meeting.

Simonyan considers the posts of the users of the Armenian section of  social networks to be frivolous, that it was this meeting that became  the reason for Minsk's official decision to stop the supply of goods  to "Ararat Brandy Factory" LLC.

The conversation between the two politicians took place on the  sidelines of the EuroNest Parliamentary Assembly, which was held in  Brussels.  Earlier, Tikhanovskaya's press service reported that  during the meeting, a representative of the Belarusian opposition  expressed words of solidarity with Armenia, and also thanked RA Prime  Minister Nikol Pashinyan for his decision not to participate in the  CSTO Summit in Minsk last November. During the meeting with the  Armenian delegation, the issue of Belarusian citizen Yaroslav  Novikov, who was detained at the request of the Belarusian security  forces, was also raised. Armenian representatives reported that he  would receive political asylum.

Meanwhile, it became known that the import of products from the  Ararat Brandy Factory was banned in Belarus. This was reported by the  Kommersant newspaper with reference to the relevant resolution of the  Deputy Minister of Health, Chief Sanitary Doctor of the Republic of  Belarus Alexander Tarasenko. The document dated March 19 states that  the decision was made in connection with the discovery of the  synthetic dye azorubine in one of the wines produced by the factory.