Monday, September 30 2013

Armenian National Assembly will come forward with evaluation of an incident between an Armenian deputy, Zarui Postanjan, and Russian frontier guards.

Over today's session of the Armenian parliament, a deputy from the opposition Armenian National Congress, Nikol Pashinyan, gave a question to the speaker of the parliament, if the latter is aware of the incident and if he applied to Russian frontier guards to clarify "why Russian frontier guards and some persons dressed in the uniform of Federal Security Service set a passport check point at the territory of Armenia and became an obstacle for free movement of Armenian citizens  and a member of the parliament, and made steps which only law-enforcement structures have a right to make".  He also added that the leadership of the Russian frontier guards made insulting and unacceptable stresses and called a member of the Armenian parliament - "pro-Western".  Nobody, especially employees of foreign services, have a right to give such a label to Armenian citizens, he said. He also added that Russian frontier guards did not have a right to make such actions without participation of the law-enforcement agencies of Armenia.  Within the frames of his authorities like a member of the parliament, Pashinyan applied to Armenia's National Security Service for explanation regarding the incident. 

For his part, speaker of the parliament Hovik Abrahamyan said that the day after the incident he had a telephone conversation with Zarui Postanjan and made an arrangement to meet with her on Saturday to specify the details of the incident, but they did not meet as Postanjan was busy. He also added that in the morning he received explanation from the commander of the Russian frontier guards but did not have an opportunity to study it. He promised that after studying the explanation the parliament will esteem the incident.