YEREVAN. – Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian, who is in New York to attend the UN General Assembly session, on Friday continued his meetings with his colleagues from a variety of countries and with international organization heads.   

During his talk with Council of Europe (CoE) Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland, they discussed the preparations for Armenia’s CoE chairmanship next year and planning the priorities of this chairmanship, and the Armenia-CoE Action Plan, Armenian MFA informs.    

Reflecting on Ramil Safarov’s release and subsequent glorification in Azerbaijan, Thorbjørn Jagland considered this to be impermissible. In this connection, Armenia’s FM highly appreciated the CoE Secretary General’s and CoE organizations’ unequivocally and unanimously condemning response.   

Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier that Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31 from Hungary, where he was serving a life sentence—and with no expression of either regret or remorse—for the premeditated axe murder of Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a NATO Partnership for Peace program in Budapest back in 2004.

As expected, Ramil Safarov’s return to Baku was welcomed, as was his act of murder, by the officials of president Ilham Aliyev’s government and much of Azerbaijani society, and the Azerbaijani president immediately granted him a pardon.

And Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan announced on August 31 that Armenia is suspending its diplomatic ties with Hungary.    

Ramil Safarov’s pardoning is condemned by virtually all international organizations.