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On December 7-8, the delegation of Armenia took part in the Plenary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) held in Belgrade. The agenda is rather full, heated, and as it usually happens during such sittings, this time also it was not succeeded to avoid semi-scandalous and tense situations. The main intrigue was the theme of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The Head the RA NA delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) Babken Tunyan said about this during the press conference on December 12.

According to the Head of the delegation, at the session of the PABSEC the mandates of the new members of the Russian delegation should be confirmed. However, the great part of 13 countries voted against the mandates of the members of the Russian delegation, and they were not confirmed. After voting the RF delegation members announced that they stop paying the membership fees and left the hall.

As Babken Tunyan presented, the debates of the reports of economic-social character went on rather tense.

The tension was again in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The Ukrainian delegation proposed to replace the formulation ‘Russian-Ukrainian conflict’ in all texts with the formulation ‘Military aggression of Russia, in the parts regarding the conflict influence.

“We have voted abstained to that proposal, because we find that the function of the Organization is directed to the economic cooperation, the reports are of economic-social character, thus, we refrained from voicing assessments. But almost all participant countries voted for the mentioned proposals, including our neighbouring countries,” Babken Tunyan said.

The members of the Assembly unanimously voted for the item of confirming the mandate of the new member of the Armenian delegation, Gevorg Papoyan.

Regarding the item of voting for confirming the mandates of the new mandates of the Russian delegation, Gevorg Papoyan noted that the delegation of Azerbaijan did not take part in the session. Turkey, Armenia, Serbia, Moldova voted for confirming the new mandates of the Russian delegation. “Azerbaijan did not take part in the voting, and we also assess this certain anti-Russian action by its character,” Gevorg Papoyan noted.

Speaking about one of the reports presented by the Azerbaijani deputy, Gevorg Papoyan informed that in the preliminary version of the mentioned report the name ‘Nagorno Karabakh’ was. The Armenian side proposed to restore that paragraph in the same way. “We had interesting voting results: Armenia naturally voted for it, Azerbaijan – against it, all the remaining countries, including Turkey voted abstained. Unfortunately, this is the reality, which gives rise to interesting analyses,” Gevorg Papoyan mentioned.