PACE as stage for dancing "berd"

When the Azerbaijani delegation was deprived of its powers in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, it was done under the pretext of demagoguery about human rights, which are allegedly violated. However, it was already clear at that time that this was done in order to ensure comfort in lobbying Armenian interests. The absence of Azerbaijani representatives has created comfortable conditions for Armenians and RA deputies feeding from the Armenian trough. Now they do not have to fend off the objections and indisputable arguments of the Azerbaijani side, and this is so convenient.

Arusiak Julakian, a member of the Armenian delegation, spoke at the regular session of the PACE session in Strasbourg on Tuesday. The lady accused Azerbaijan of departing from some previously reached agreements and of making claims to the Constitution of Armenia. Julakian stated that Armenia recognizes the territorial integrity of all its neighbors beyond its own 29,743 square kilometers, and the RA Constitution and its amendments are an internal matter of Armenia. In addition, she expressed the crazy idea that Baku, they say, is going to "undertake a new aggression against Armenia" after COP29, as evidenced by reports from the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry on violations of the ceasefire regime. Following Julakian's logic, in the interests of the peace process, the Azerbaijani side should keep silent about the Armenian provocations, that is, not the shelling of Azerbaijani positions from Armenia, but reports about them slow down the peace process. Very interesting logic.

A lot of things were said, and the speaker was very pleased with herself. If the Azerbaijani delegation had been present at the meeting, the lies and insinuations would have been answered, and the hall would no longer seem so comfortable to the Armenians. There was no one to slap the representative of Armenia on the lips for deceiving the international community. The spoken speech was digested and digested. That is why lobbyists and sympathizers sought the excommunication of Azerbaijanis from PACE. The songs about rights and elections were just an artistic accompaniment designed to cover up the true goals of the Assembly's behavior.

However, why be surprised. If in 1992 the lobby managed to achieve the adoption of the 907th Amendment against Azerbaijan, which was subjected to military aggression, it is easy to imagine the degree of irritation in pro-Armenian Western circles towards Baku, which won the war. Unfortunately, this is not an exaggeration. National delegations to PACE are deprived of their powers only for very serious offenses of their countries, offenses of an international nature. And the official reasons for depriving the Azerbaijani delegation of its voice were not even clearly stated.

On an unofficial level, everything was clear to everyone from the very beginning. The silence in response to the speech of the Armenian delegate speaks very loudly.

Enough has already been said about the fact that the Constitution of Armenia is not an internal matter of Armenia. Azerbaijan has no claims to this document in its entirety, our claims are related only to the preamble referring to the Declaration of Independence. Claims to the "fundamental principles of Armenian statehood and national goals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence of Armenia" forming the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia. Because the Declaration proclaims the independence of the republic, "based on the joint Resolution of the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR and the National Council of Nagorno-Karabakh dated December 1, 1989 "On the reunification of the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh."

In the presence of this provision in the Basic Law of the country, the recognition of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan by Yerevan turns into nothing. It should be recalled that even Kocharyan and Sargsyan spoke about recognizing the integrity of Azerbaijan. Therefore, today's confession means nothing to us. These are just words, and not intended for the Azerbaijani side, but for outside listeners who are not aware of the essence of the issue and only hear that Yerevan offers to sign peace in a month, but Baku refuses. To outsiders, everything that sounded in PACE looks exactly like this. And no one heard the opposite opinion due to the absence of an opponent

By the way, there was one interesting point in Julakian's speech. She accused Baku of starting to "interfere" in the internal Armenian discourse on the Constitution back in 2018. What does this mean? No, not about the treachery of Azerbaijan, but about the fact that, having come to power, Nikol Pashinyan immediately began to make attempts to rid Armenia of a toxic document, which, as he understood (which there can be no doubt), would not allow it to get out of regional isolation in any scenario. For six years, the Armenian Prime Minister has been trying to do this and every time he stumbles upon the resistance of the zombified masses, who are guided not by reason, but by instincts. One can only sympathize with him. It is already clear today that the Armenian society, which is subject to illusions, is not ready for a referendum on the Constitution and will not be ready for a very long time. And the removal of toxic provisions from the document is one of the main conditions of Azerbaijan.

Baku cannot agree to the signing of peace without removing territorial claims from the principles of Armenian statehood. Such a peace will be unstable, while for everyone, especially for the pro-Armenian Western club, the peace treaty will be a flag that they will wave whenever Azerbaijan has to respond to "unnoticed" Armenian provocations. That's how it is today. The Armenian side is shelling the positions of the Azerbaijani army, and PACE accuses us of escalating tensions. One can imagine the noise that will shake international organizations in such situations after the signing of a peace treaty.

The other day, the former British ambassador to Azerbaijan, James Sharp, spoke very cautiously and diplomatically on his account on the social network X, pointing out that Baku's statements about problems in the Armenian Constitution are not unfounded. As a precedent for resolving such situations, the British diplomat cited the changes made to the Constitution of Ireland in connection with the signing of the British-Irish Belfast Agreement in 1998, which put an end to thirty years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

It must be said that the Irish government held the referendum quickly, without lengthy preliminary debates and discussions in society. Dublin did not have to persuade its people and explain the advantages of peace. The Irish acted wisely, without hysteria, agreeing to remove from their Constitution provisions that could lead to new bloodshed in the future.

All these arguments would have been voiced at the PACE session if the Azerbaijani deputies had not been prudently removed from the work of the Assembly.

There would also be a response to Pashinyan's proposal to create a commission to investigate incidents at the border. There will be no point in such a commission. Two hundred observers of the EU monitoring group are constantly cruising along the border on the Armenian side. 

This group is armed with all necessary means to record and investigate incidents. At the same time, the Europeans, in contrast to the statements of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry, unanimously assert that there are no violations of the ceasefire regime on the part of Armenia. Is it worth creating some kind of commission if the Armenian side has so many lawyers and defenders who have already declared it beyond its jurisdiction?

Neighbors should understand that Azerbaijan does not intend to waste time and ensure that violators are named and publicly punished. Azerbaijan needs provocations to simply stop, no matter who ordered and carried them out - the Armenian authorities or the Armenian opposition. And there is no point in bothering with discussions and investigations, the outcome of which is known in advance with such a support group in Armenia. It's a waste of time.

Since the April 2016 fighting, surveillance equipment has been installed along the conditional border on the Armenian side and on the line of contact in Karabakh, allegedly designed to record violations. In all these years, I have never had to see any kind of report on what is happening. The occupiers shot at our soldiers, at frontline villages, killed children and the elderly, but no one ever accused them of what they had done. Even during the stay of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh, there was never anything in the bulletins of the Russian Ministry of Defense about the shelling of our positions by separatists. This is an amazing mystery of nature.  

As for the lack of reaction of official Baku to Pashinyan's proposal to sign a peace treaty in July, everything is simple here. Baku does not respond to frivolous proposals. The President of Azerbaijan has clearly outlined our "red lines" - it is impossible to sign peace without changes in the Constitution of Armenia. After that, to continue repeating from every rostrum about Yerevan's readiness to sign the document even tomorrow is just a cheap self-promotion and misleading the international community.

In short, the last PACE meeting clearly demonstrated why the Azerbaijani delegation was removed from the Assembly in order to turn this site into a stage for dancing "berd".