April 26, 2008

RAFFI HOVANNISIAN ON PARLIAMENTARY MISSION TO SERBIA, KOSOVO

Yerevan—Raffi K. Hovannisian, chairman of the Heritage Party and leader of its group in the National Assembly, took part from April 21 to 25 in a mission of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) to Serbia and Kosovo. Armenia was also represented by General Artur Aghabekyan, who heads the republic’s delegation to the parliamentary assembly.

The mission, which was led by British MP Michael Clapham who chairs the NATO PA Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security and which comprised members from more than ten countries, visited Belgrade and Pristina to learn first-hand about the current situation in the region.

In Belgrade, Raffi Hovannisian and his colleagues held meetings with a roundtable of NATO ambassadors; Deputy Speaker Miloljub Albijanic of the Serbian National Assembly; Chairman Marko Djurisic of the Serbian delegation to the NATO PA and several MPs representing the Standing Committees on European Integration, on Kosovo and Metohija, and on Defense and Security; Deputy Minister for Kosovo Ljubomir Kljakic; Deputy Foreign Minister Borislav Stefanovic; Lieutenant General Zdravko Ponos, Chief of the Serbian Armed Forces General Staff; officials of the Atlantic Council of Serbia; as well as NGO representatives and university students.

Among the topics broached by the Armenian participants in Belgrade were ways and means to surmount the crisis in Serbian-NATO relations, Serbia’s recent anti-Armenian vote at the United Nations, and the imperative not to employ the prospect of recognition of the Mountainous Karabagh Republic and its legally-declared independence as a bargaining or public-relations chip vis-a-vis the international community.

In Pristina, the combined parliamentary delegation was received by Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu and members of government; Speaker Jakup Krasniqi, parliamentary leaders, and minority representatives of the Assembly of Kosovo; Ambassador Tim Guldimann of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo; Ambassador Lawrence Rossin, Principal Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General; Ambassadors Pieter Feith and Roy Reeve of the European Union Representation in Kosovo; as well as KFOR Deputy Commander Major General Gerhard Stelz and other high-ranking officers.

During the Pristina meetings Raffi Hovannisian and Artur Aghabekyan underscored the Transatlantic and Kosovar need to overcome artificial reliance on the concept of “uniqueness” or “sui generis” and thus the apparent pursuit of an unjust monopoly on liberty, self-determination and sovereignty which flouts the rule of law, and at KFOR headquarters inquired as to why Azerbaijan had hastily recalled its troops from the multinational peacekeeping force.

On April 24, Hovannisian, Aghabekyan, and Armenian Defense Ministry interpreter Aram Hovhannisyan paid a special visit to the 34 Armenian peacekeepers who are serving on a Greek base in the US-supervised sector of Kosovo. In a most moving meeting on the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a ceremony of prayers, speeches, and questions and answers delivered the conclusion that there could be no higher monument to the memory of the victims, the homes, and the lands of the Great Armenian Dispossession than the daily duty which each and every Armenian soldier fulfills at home and abroad.

The Armenian delegation also consulted on base with the visiting deputy prime minister of the Hellenic Republic, its deputy defense minister, and the general in command of its land forces.