Armenian Parliament Speaker: Azerbaijan distorts the core and reasons of the Karabakh conflict

• Thursday, January 10, 13:23

 Armenian Parliament Speaker Hovik Abrahamyan, who is on an official visit to Brussels, met with EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy Stefan Fule on January 9. They discussed a broad spectrum of bilateral issues, the Armenian National Assembly press-service told ArmInfo.

H. Abrahamyan and S. Fule welcomed the progress in the negotiations for the Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. Stefan Fule thanked Armenia for canceling visas for EU member-states. The two parties assigned high priority to the upcoming free and transparent presidential election in Armenia. 

During his visit, Speaker Abrahamyan had a meeting also with President of the Senate of the Kingdom of Belgium Sabine de Bethune and President of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives is Andre Flahaut.  Perspectives of parliamentary cooperation, including at international structures, were discussed during the meeting. The sides touched upon the Karabakh peace process. In this context, Hovik Abrahamyan said that Armenia's stance is based on three basic
principles of the International Law: non-use of force of threat of force, the peoples' right to self-determination and the territorial integrity.  He said that Azerbaijan constantly impedes the negotiations with its policy based on the territorial integrity principle only. Abrahamyan said that such approach rules out any
compromises and drew attention at the fact that Baku distorts the core and the reasons of the conflict trying to involve other international organizations into the peace process, which torpedoes the conflict's resolution.

As regards the Armenian-Turkish normalization, the speaker said that Armenia has always come out with constructive initiatives and has been committed to the protocols signed in Zurich. Armenia is ready to fulfill its commitments without any preconditions, he said.

Today on January 10 Hovik Abrahamyan will meet with the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz and the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, will visit an Armenian church and lay a wreath at the monument of the Armenian Genocide victims.

On January 10 the delegation led by the NA President Hovik Abrahamyan will return to Yerevan.