YEREVAN. – Not an anti-Armenian, but a pro-Azerbaijani disposition reigns at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

Ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) MP Lernik Aleksanyan stated the abovementioned at a press conference on Saturday.

In his words, PACE is a pressure lever against the countries that have problems with Europe. 

“This became apparent especially after Armenia’s accession into the EEU (i.e. the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union, in January 2015),” Aleksanyan stressed. “The factor of Armenia’s EEU accession plays an important role.”

The RPA deputy added that even though PACE reports cannot have any legal effects, they can form a viewpoint.

“At any rate, this is a ‘yellow card’ to us all [i.e. the Armenian side],” Lernik Aleksanyan said. “We need to work toward forming a positive viewpoint [toward the Armenian side] of the international community.” 

To Armenian News-NEWS.am’s query on what prevented the Armenian delegation to PACE from working so that the two anti-Armenian reports would not be debated at this organization, the MP noted that there are things which the Armenian delegation members could not have foreseen.

“For example, our friend Georgia voted ‘for’ the adoption of the reports, to wheedle Azerbaijan,” Aleksanyan noted. “This was rather an assessment of political relations.”

The RPA MP stressed that, after the adoption of the report by Milica Marković, the Armenian side needs to see to it that the negotiations on the use of the water resources of the Sarsang Reservoir are conducted with the Karabakh side.

PACE on Tuesday voted against MP Robert Walter’s (UK) one-sided report entitled “Escalation of Violence in Nagorno-Karabakh and Other Occupied Territories of Azerbaijan,” but adopted MP Milica Marković’s (Bosnia and Herzegovina) one-sided report about Sarsang Reservoir in Nagorno-Karabakh, and entitled “Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water.”

To note, representatives of the PACE Unified European Left Group, the Socialist Group, and the European People’s Party voted against both anti-Armenian reports.