Vice President of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, Eduard Sharmazanov, who is also Head of the NA Delegation to the CSTO Parliamentary Assembly, on Wednesday took part in the international scientific-practical conference entitled “The Prior Directions of the Inter-parliamentary Cooperation Aimed at Strengthening of the Collective and International Security in the CSTO Format” in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he also delivered a speech

“During the last years the Armenians have felt all the negative consequences of terrorism directly on their skin. Thousands of Syrian Armenians had to emigrate from Syria because of the situation there.

“It is not news for us: still at the beginning of the 90s the territory of Azerbaijan was turned into a centre, where the terrorist Mojahedin were preparing their acts to be held in the Caucasus region. There the terrorists, as Shamil Basayev and the ones like him repeatedly were finding asylum.

“It is worth noting that in September Azerbaijan began using hard artillery, regularly keeping under shelling the settlements of the Republic of Armenia.

“During the last months [Armenian] civilians, including women, fell victims to the Azerbaijani assaults. What name can be given to this policy? The civilians’ murder is nothing but terrorism.

“The absence of the appropriate response by the international community—including the CSTO—on Azerbaijan’s provoking steps can result in the resumption of the military actions in the zone of the responsibility of the organization.

“We call on everybody to reject the use of the force in our region.

“We consider inadmissible Turkey’s downing of the Russian Su-24 warplane, which was combating terrorism.

“We shall activate our efforts to oppose the diverse initiatives and steps which contradict the interests of several CSTO member states, or even one of them,” Sharmazanov specifically noted in his address.