Vice Speaker of Armenian Parliament: Processes around international recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic start developing positively

• Friday, March 1, 16:33

The formation of a Lithuania-Artsakh Parliamentary Friendship Group in the Lithuanian Parliament demonstrates that the European Union countries have actually started recognizing the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh at the parliamentary level and they realize that it is impossible to ignore this fact, Eduard Sharmazanov, Head of the Armenia-Lithuania Parliamentary Friendship Group, Vice Speaker of Armenian Parliament, told ArmInfo.  He stressed that the Lithuanian Parliament's initiative is an important step towards international recognition of Nagorno- Karabakh. Such phenomena have become a tendency: the creation of the Lithuania-Artsakh Parliamentary Friendship Group was preceded by the visit of Speaker of the Parliament of Uruguay to Karabakh. "The processes around recognition of Nagorno- Karabakh have already started developing positively. The relations will first be built at the inter-parliamentary level, and then we will witness the fluttering of the NKR flags in the European capitals", Sharmazanov said. He thinks that the Lithuanian Parliament's initiative will become a precedent for other EU countries as well.  In the meantime, Sharmazanov thinks it is hardly probable that the Azerbaijan pressure may have an effect on the Lithuanian parliamentarians' initiative. He stressed that member of the Lithuania-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group Algis Kaseta, who is also a member of the Lithuania-Artsakh initiative group, assured that the number of the Lithuanian parliamentarians in the group would grow in the course of time.

To note, a Lithuania-Artsakh Parliamentary Friendship Group has been set up in the Lithuanian Parliament. In includes 9 parliamentarians representing various political forces. Azerbaijan has already filed a note of protest to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry in relation to this initiative.