The sub-committee on the Nagorno Karabakh problem functioning under Resolution No 1416 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) cannot carry out its mission in reality: to create mutual trust between the delegations of Armenia and Azerbaijan and to extend that trust to relations between the societies of the two countries. Head of the Armenian delegation at PACE, member of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) David Harutyunian said at the October 11 press conference that he had presented this unanimous position of their delegation at the PACE session held on October 3-7, during the report of the Bureau and the Permanent Commisssion of the PACE. Naturally the Armenian delegation did not participate in the sitting of the sub-committee on Nagorno Karabakh held on the first day of the session. “We said that we had declared a moratorium as our first step and we have continued our line for two consecutive sessions”, D. Harutyunian noted. In his words, unlike the Armenian delegation, the Azerbaijani one “did not react positively in any way to our proposal”. As a result, the delegates of neighboring country use every opportunity to voice accusations and cast aspersions on Armenia in their speeches. By the way, they did the same at the session, during discussions of the resolution on activities of democratic institutions in Armenia, as a result of which all members of the Armenian delegation left the hall of sessions during their speeches. According to D. Harutyunian, Azerbaijani delegates too made speeches during the report on activities of the PACE Bureau and Permanent Commission. ‘The delegation tried to present our nonparticipation as non-implementation of Bureau decisions by the Armenian delegation, trying to equate it with another decision of the Bureau,” D. Harutyunian said. He explained that the Bureau had decided that a rapporteur of PACE was to visit Azerbaijan to prepare a report on political prisoners, but that person was denied entry into Azerbaijan. The head of the Armenian delegation did not voice any forecasts about further activities of the abovementioned sub-committee, expressing an opinion that there will be a discussion related to the sub-committee at one of the next sittings of the PACE Bureau. In response to the question about how likely it is that the activities of the sub-committee revived by efforts PACE President Mevlut Cavusoglu will be stopped after the completion of his tenure, David Harutyunian said: “For the present, I will refrain from answering this question because there are various likely versions, everything at the PACE depends on a political situation, unfortunately. “It is our deepest conviction that this organization ceased to be an organization of values and is increasingly becoming an organization of interests”.

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