YEREVAN. - President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on Tuesday had a meeting at a tea table with the ambassadors of the OSCE member states. 

Welcoming the already traditional meeting format, the President noted that the parliamentary election held in the country served as an occasion for that meeting. 

Recalling the last meeting with the ambassadors in this format during the days of April war in 2016, Sargsyan expressed hope that the war served as a lesson not only for Azerbaijan but everyone as an OSCE member state and one common security area so that everyone is very watchful for alarms and security threats. In his opening speech, Sargsyan not only referred to the parliamentary election and its assessment by the international observation missions, but also responded to all the questions of interest to the meeting participants.

The questions of the ambassadors referred to the assessments of the parliamentary election, continuous steps aimed at enhancing democracy in Armenia in the post-electoral period, the agenda of governmental reforms, efforts towards the struggle against corruption, work with the civil society and different strata, including work with youth and development of programs of cooperation with them, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement process and regional developments.

The ambassadors thanked President Sargsyan for making meetings in such a format regular, noting that during a conversation in an open and frank environment they get an opportunity to receive quite important and detailed information on issues of interest to them directly from the President, as well as listen to different views of the President on specific issues and the ways of the solution thereof.

Referring to the parliamentary election, Sargsyan noted that not only in case of election but also when assessing any phenomena, he tries to avoid giving the description of “the most,”preferring to give simply contextual assessment to processes.  

“I would like to note that this election recorded important progress, which Armenia has reached in the sphere of democracy and state-building. I think, the progress in election is conditioned by several circumstances, three of which I would like to draw your attention to.

I think the first circumstance is that in the recent years we have managed to make the advancement of human rights and fundamental freedoms irreversible,” he said, at the same time stressing that the human rights and fundamental freedoms are the context, within the framework whereof the elections are held in Armenia. “The dissidence in political and social life, which is expressed by political parties and vital political society, has become a reality in the recent decade. By saying this I don’t mean that we have no issues to solve here: we have a lot of issues to solve.  I mean, the grounds for this are already solid, and we can construct a building thereon, which is necessary to our people,” the Armenian President said.

According to Sargsyan, the second circumstance of the progress recorded in the election is the agreement reached between the political forces, the third being the very high level of international cooperation. 

“From this standpoint, I should express my gratitude to the countries, whose representatives took part in the parliamentary election observation within the composition of the OSCE/ODIHR, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, CIS Secretariat, CIS Parliamentary Assembly, PACE or their respective embassies.

Armenia gave OSCE/ODIHR—which played a key role in coordinating a number of actions of electoral missions—an opportunity to allocate unlimited number of observers. I am happy to note that the ODIHR significantly increased the number of observers right in the run-up to the election, explaining this by the fact that many countries take interest in our election. We agreed that the number of observers be increased by fifty,” Sargsyan noted.

By the end of the opening speech, the President expressed conviction that the cooperation of the OSCE member states with Armenia is mutually beneficial and creates good traditions, this merely being a necessity for the region. “We will continue to fulfill our international obligations in full, definitely relying on the support of your countries,” he concluded.